Traumatic combat loss triggered uncontrolled firing and emotional numbness in child soldiers

Evidence

As I looked to where he lay, my eyes caught Musa, whose head was covered with blood. His hands looked too relaxed. I turned toward the swamp, where there were gunmen running, trying to cross over. My face, my hands, my shirt and gun were covered with blood. I raised my gun and pulled the trigger, and I killed a man. Suddenly, as if someone was shooting them inside my brain, all the massacres I had seen since the day I was touched by war began flashing in my head. Every time I stopped shooting to change magazines and saw my two young lifeless friends, I angrily pointed my gun into the swamp and killed more people. I shot everything that moved, until we were ordered to retreat because we needed another strategy. — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 460

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 460
• XREF: connects to: Severe psychological trauma creates impenetrable mental barriers against pre-war memories — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 569; Extreme battlefield noise can annihilate thought and reduce a person to helpless reflex — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute…, 424; Noise perceived as a danger signal triggers fight-or-flight responses even during sleep — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 1052 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Extreme battlefield noise can annihilate thought and reduce a person to helpless reflex #expands (0.80) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 424
• Severe psychological trauma creates impenetrable mental barriers against pre-war memories #expands (0.75) — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 569
• Noise perceived as a danger signal triggers fight-or-flight responses even during sleep #exemplifies (0.75) — Gordon Hempton, John Grossmann, One Square Inch of Silence- One Man’s…, 1052
• Different adversities alter brain regions matched to the developmental stage of harm #expands (0.65) — , The Rod and the Child, 9655