Even I as a young boy in the 60s knew about "Shell Shock".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_shock
Boys grow up with an understanding that they may be drafted and have to fight a war so we watched stuff like "Combat" and "Hogan's Heroes". Hubbard had to have had a deep interest in Shell Shock as a subject, by any of it's many names, especially since he was so close to the post WWI period and from a military family. There has always been a stigma surrounding this issue as it is difficult to diagnose and can easily be credited to a weakness in character. But Shell Shock is caused by the obvious and extreme conditions of war, yet much of the same effect can be caused by prolonged stressful circumstances such as the Sea Org. I've had to talk fellow Sea Org members down from what I would describe as very close to a psychotic break. That point where a person is about to blow is very much like that. Wide eyed, they are heavily conflicted with decisions about leaving a spouse, friends or other family members, being labeled an SP, an Enemy, Traitor, and denigrated as a failure. They know according to policy by virtue of wanting to leave or discussing it they are suppressive and the only way to route out is to subject themselves to intrusive sec-checks where they probe every thought about leaving and who you have spoken to - including me if I am the person trying to talk them down. They may not know that the Freeloader Debt is not enforceable by law. All their Certs and Awards will be cancelled and upper levels of the Bridge may be banned forever leaving a stigma on them from other Scientologists, including friends and family. If they blow, they know their own co-workers, people they have cared for and respected will be charged to chase them down and "recover" them with all the talk about how everything will be alright, and different, the problems will be fixed, the outside world is insane and they need your help to save it.
Your life is governed by statistics but you have no real control over the production of those statistics. Sure you can count things like the "letters in" or "bodies in" but the overall conditions of Scientology depend upon Scientology being liked and valued by the general public and the organization holds them in complete contempt and treats them with carefully constructed duplicity in policy and culture. The erosion of trust shows up on the bottom line and you are eating beans and rice and scrounging for TP while being told it's your fault. You are denied the logistics to build up and improve your area to raise your respective stats. If you get a new person and they are too good then they are transferred and replaced by another less promising candidate if at all. The worse things get the stronger the witch hunts for the SPs in the org dragging everyone else down. You're walking on eggshells. The sleep deprivation, lack of proper nutrition, subsistence living standards, crowded dorms, bedbugs, cockroaches, lack of extracurricular activities and vacations, little interaction with outside family and friends, correspondence being monitored - it has a cumulative effect.
You become emotionally numb, dead in the head, afraid to innovate because you don't know if you will be punished or rewarded because the interpretation of policy is so fickle, like Muslims praying 5 times a day you go to Muster 3 times a day, there is no let up, it's constant refocusing back to work, It's Metropolis the movie and you are a walking zombie going from one shift to the other with no change in sight.
Sea Org members are "reasonable" if they accept that public Scientologists should be any different. They need to go to course, pay for auditing, donate to the IAS, volunteer, join staff, give their children to the Sea Org, go into debt on the promise that the benefits will provide the ability to generate more money many times over. The Scientology version of Shell Shock spreads through the entire Scientology community over time but they have been trained to "mock up" being VGIs (Very Good Indicators) so they they don't fail the e-meter exam after a course completion or auditing session which would cause them to redo services at great time and expense or be deemed a "No-Case-Gain" and they can't tell the people closest to them that they are having doubts and reservations because that would mean they are in a "Condition" of "Doubt" - more money, more amends, more denigration.
Scientology is a calculated formula for a slow rolling form of Shell Shock.