The psychological effects of being a prisoner of war: forty years after release.

Forty years after the end of World War II, the authors compared a random sample of former Japanese-held Australian prisoners of war (POWs) with a group of non-POW combatants of the same era. The POWs were significantly more depressed than were the control subjects, but the two groups did not differ in prevalence of anxiety symptoms or alcohol problems. Apart from a higher rate of postwar duodenal ulcer in the POWs, the two groups had similar degrees of medical morbidity.