Medicine:Thousand-yard stare
The thousand-yard stare (also referred to as two-thousand-yard stare) is the blank, unfocused gaze of people experiencing dissociation due to acute stress or traumatic events. The phrase was originally used to describe war combatants and the post-traumatic stress they exhibited but is now also used to refer to an unfocused gaze observed in people under any stressful situation, or in people with certain mental health conditions.[2]
The thousand-yard stare is often associated with shell shock, combat stress reaction, and other trauma-related mental health conditions.[2][3][4]
Origin
The phrase was popularized after Life magazine published the painting Marines Call It That 2,000 Yard Stare by World War II artist and correspondent Tom Lea,[5] although the painting was not referred to with that title in the 1945 magazine article. The painting, a 1944 portrait of a nameless Marine at the Battle of Peleliu, is now held by the United States Army Center of Military History in Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C.[6] About the real-life Marine who was his subject, Lea said:
He left the States 31 months ago. He was wounded in his first campaign. He has had tropical diseases. He half-sleeps at night and gouges Japs out of holes all day. Two-thirds of his company has been killed or wounded. He will return to attack this morning. How much can a human being endure?[7]
When recounting his arrival in Vietnam in 1965, then-Corporal Joe Houle (director of the Marine Corps Museum of the Carolinas in 2002) said he saw no emotion in the eyes of his new squad: "The look in their eyes was like the life was sucked out of them". He later learned that the term for their condition was "the 1,000-yard stare". "After I lost my first friend, I felt it was best to be detached," he explained.[8]
See also
References
- ↑ Andaloro, Angela (2024-07-22). "Origins of the Thousand Yard Stare meme" (in en-US). https://www.dailydot.com/memes/thousand-yard-stare-meme/.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Peleliu as a paradigm for PTSD: The two thousand yard stare - Hektoen International" (in en-US). https://hekint.org/2017/01/22/peleliu-as-a-paradigm-for-ptsd-the-two-thousand-yard-stare/.
- ↑ Mills, M. Anthony; Mills, Mark P. (2014). "The Invention of the War Machine". The New Atlantis (42): 3–23. ISSN 1543-1215. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-invention-of-the-war-machine.
- ↑ Kudler, Harold (2017). "Combat Stress and Related Disorders". Principles and Practice of Hospital Medicine. McGraw-Hill Education.
- ↑ Life magazine, 6/11/1945, p. 65. link
- ↑ Jones, James, Tom Lea (illustration), (1975). - "Two-Thousand-Yard Stare" . - WW II. - (c/o Military History Network). - Grosset and Dunlap. - pp.113,116. - ISBN 0-448-11896-3
- ↑ LaRocque, Gene (1991). "War Through the Eyes of Artists" (Transcript of televised broadcast). America's Defense Monitor, Program Number 438. Center for Defense Information. Archived from the original on 2006-10-26. https://web.archive.org/web/20061026072828/http://www.cdi.org/adm/Transcripts/438/. Retrieved 2006-10-27.
- ↑ Stone, Sgt. Arthur L. (2002-05-02). "Retired Sgt. Maj. Joe Houle recounts Vietnam tour". Camp Lejeune News (Jacksonville, NC: United States Marine Corps). http://www.lejeune.marines.mil/News/tabid/1099/Article/511426/retired-sgt-maj-joe-houle-recounts-vietnam-tour.aspx.
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