During the Armenian Genocide — along with hundreds of other Armenian intellectuals — Komitas was arrested and deported to a prison camp in April 1915 by the Ottoman government . He was soon released under unclear circumstances and experienced a mental breakdown and developed a severe case of posttraumatic stress disorder ( PTSD ) . The widespread hostile environment in Constantinople and reports of mass-scale Armenian death marches and massacres that reached him further worsened his fragile mental state . He was first placed in a Turkish military-operated hospital until 1919 and then transferred to psychiatric hospitals in Paris , where he spent the last years of his life in agony . Komitas is widely seen as a martyr of the genocide and has been depicted as one of the main symbols of the Armenian Genocide in art
arrested and deported
Deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915
Komitas