changing how people think about these events or helping them to understand that if they hold on to thesevents, it won't be adaptive for them, maybe we can prevent the thing from happening. only some veterans develop post-traumatic stress disorder, though many continue to undergo heightened stress, and the baum study has revealed that the most important factor in determining whether they feel long-term stress isn't how much combat they experienced, but whether they have intrusive or uncontrollable thoughts. one of the things we think is going on there is this notion that people are reliving the experiences. what that does is re-create the experience for them. every time they experience that, they may be experiencing another of these biological reactions. whenever i think about that, i'll experience stress, and i may experience all these biological changes again, and if i do that for the next 1o years, i'll find myself aroused a lot, and that's not necessarily good. veterans are not the only people to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder. dean kilpatrick is director of the crime victims resear