The Gulf War illness problem is seen as a postwar syndrome related to veteran discontent rather than as a new phenomenon. K. L. Artiss proposes that application of social psychiatric thinking and workmen's compensation experience can help in understanding the problem. Social psychiatry has been neglected in the training of many psychiatrists so that they fail to understand the Army as a community and to recognize that a community's parts may develop symptom neuroses. Most psychiatrists know that a symptom neurosis will not disappear until it no longer serves its purpose. The young soldier may know that he is being trained for combat duty but manages to distance himself from the realities of military combat by creating a psychic reality that protects him. Social psychiatric emphasis is used to describe the soldier's response when brought face to face with himself as a combatant with overwhelming responsibilities and genuine lethal danger.