American former prisoners of war (POWs) are exceptional individuals. As many as 110,000 were alive in the mid-1950s; at last estimate, less than 30,000 remained (Stenger 2006). They were subjected to an appalling spectrum of harsh abuse and suffered a myriad of insults, including malnutrition, exposure to environmental extremes, infections, and physical and emotional injuries. With few exceptions, they did not receive the special attention they deserved from the Veterans Administration until the passage of the POW Act of 1981 (Pub. L. No. 97-37), described later in this chapter.Post-repatriation treatment was aimed at restoring their lost weight and treating their medical illnesses and physical injuries. Many were told that their ordeal would shorten their lifespan considerably, although the studies cited below showed increased illness and death rates only in the first postwar years. Beebe (1975) proposed a model to explain the persisting effects he observed among POWs he studied. It consists of two trauma types: one is physical and primarily short-term, caused by malnutrition, infection, and physical injury; the other is psychological and essentially permanent, leading to a loss of ego strength and lowered thresholds for both physical and psychological distress.