This study focuses on the subsequent military adjustment of soldiers who experienced an episode of combat reaction during the 1973 Yom-Kippur war. These soliders were compared to matched controls who participated in the Yom-Kippur War but did not sustain any psychiatric injury. Nine years later, 94% of this combat-reaction group continued to serve in the I.D.F. compared to 98% of the control group. Just 43.6% of the combat reaction (CR) group as compared to 90.36% in the control group retained their previous fitness rating as combatants. Furthermore, 80% of those eligible for combat among the CR soldiers actually took part in the Lebanon War and only one percent of these soldiers suffered a recurrent episode of reaction. These results support the notion that a complete recovery from combat reaction is possible and vindicate the clinical judgments made by the army medical personnel with regard to combat fitness.
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Solomon et al. (1986) studied this question.