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
Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide
Komitas