 Intended to educate the public about posttraumatic stress disorder and its treatment among returning veterans, the film's unscripted presentation of mental disability led to "Let There Be Light" being suppressed by the U.S. government; it was not released until the 1980s.As the U.S. Army was demobilizing near the end of World War II it had the task of reintegrating returning military veterans back into peacetime society.An obstacle veterans faced was the stigma surrounding "shell shock" or "psychoneurosis", the old terms for posttraumatic stress disorder.