This is a misreading. PTSD is, and always has been, a thing of its own. But for a very long time people with explosive blast traumatic brain injury ("shell sho

This is a misreading. PTSD is, and always has been, a thing of its own. But for a very long time people with explosive blast traumatic brain injury ("shell shock") were misdiagnosed as having only PTSD. In all likelihood many people with "shell shock" that has been misdiagnosed as PTSD alone also actually have PTSD as well. The major symptoms of "shell shock" include disorientation, weakness or numbness in extremities, dizziness, memory problems, irritability, confusion, etc. Typical major symptoms of PTSD include reliving the event in your mind (such as through "intrusive imagery"), hyperarousal, hypervigillance, and emotional distress (especially negative changes in thinking, ideals, mood, etc.). There is some overlap because the stress aspect will make people irritable and distressed. Because all of these things are filtered through personalities and cognition it can be difficult to suss out the underlying true symptoms, especially if someone doesn't want to share their feelings. But you can have both. And the fact that many soldiers who have been the victims of blast trauma almost certainly will have some degree of PTSD as well (due to the likelihood that the blast was a major traumatic incident in their life, possibly involving the death or grievous injury of someone close to them) has made it all the more difficult to suss out the particular role of "shell shock". I suspect that a lot of the research into traumatic brain injury in boxing and football has aided the discovery (or re-discovery) of "shell shock" greatly.