The 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1 could be viewed as a tempting opportunity to acknowledge the origins of military psychiatry and the start of a journey from psychological ignorance to enlightenment. However, the psychiatric legacy of the war is ambiguous. During World War 1, a new disorder (shellshock) and a new treatment (forward psychiatry) were introduced, but the former should not be thought of as the fi rst recognition of what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder and the latter did not off er the solution to the management of psychiatric casualties, as was subsequently claimed. For this Series paper, we researched contemporary publications, classifi ed military reports, and casualty returns to reassess the conventional narrative about the eff ect of shellshock on psychiatric practice. We conclude that the expression of distress by soldiers was culturally mediated and that patients with postcombat syndromes presented with symptom clusters and causal interpretations that engaged the attention of doctors but also resonated with popular health concerns. Likewise, claims for the effi cacy of forward psychiatry were infl ated. The vigorous debates that arose in response to controversy about the nature of psychiatric disorders and the discussions about how these disorders should be managed remain relevant to the trauma experienced by military personnel who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The psychiatric history of World War 1 should be thought of as an opportunity for commemoration and in terms of its contemporary relevance—not as an opportunity for self-congratulation.

The 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War 1 could be viewed as a tempting opportunity to acknowledge the origins of military psychiatry and the start of a journey from psychological ignorance to enlightenment. However, the psychiatric legacy of the war is ambiguous. During World War 1, a new disorder (shellshock) and a new treatment (forward psychiatry) were introduced, but the former should not be thought of as the fi rst recognition of what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder and the latter did not off er the solution to the management of psychiatric casualties, as was subsequently claimed. For this Series paper, we researched contemporary publications, classifi ed military reports, and casualty returns to reassess the conventional narrative about the eff ect of shellshock on psychiatric practice. We conclude that the expression of distress by soldiers was culturally mediated and that patients with postcombat syndromes presented with symptom clusters and causal interpretations that engaged the attention of doctors but also resonated with popular health concerns. Likewise, claims for the effi cacy of forward psychiatry were infl ated. The vigorous debates that arose in response to controversy about the nature of psychiatric disorders and the discussions about how these disorders should be managed remain relevant to the trauma experienced by military personnel who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The psychiatric history of World War 1 should be thought of as an opportunity for commemoration and in terms of its contemporary relevance-not as an opportunity for self-congratulation.

Bioethics, 2009

The authors describe the arrival and treatment of 164 severe chronic psychiatric patients who were displaced from the Serbian army-controlled Jakes psychiatric hospital and off-loaded on the afternoon of 28th of May, 1992 at the gates of the Psychiatry Clinic in Tuzla.Through analysis of their incomplete medical records, which arrived with the patients in Tuzla, and analysis of their activities during and after the war, they found that 83 of the patients (50%) were males and 147 (89.6%) were admitted to the Psychiatry Clinic in Tuzla. Of the patients, 86 (58.5%) were found to be Serbs. The majority of them were incapable of independent living and required ongoing medical and social care. They were from all regions of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 81.6% had schizophrenia and 70 (47.6%) were over 50 years of age.For its humanitarian work, its contribution to peace and for the maintenance of the multi-ethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Psychiatry Clinic in Tuzla received the Golden Award for Peace from the International Legion of Humanists in May 1998.

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1991

Bioethics, 2010

The authors describe the arrival and treatment of 164 severe chronic psychiatric patients who were displaced from the Serbian army-controlled Jakes psychiatric hospital and off-loaded on the afternoon of 28th of May, 1992 at the gates of the Psychiatry Clinic in Tuzla.

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2014

This volume, edited by Hans-Walter Schmuhl (Professor of Modern History at the University of Bielefeld, Germany) and Volker Roelcke (Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Giessen, Germany), looks at the historical developments in Central European psychiatry after the end of the Great War. The research contributions in this book stem from a workshop at the Rhine-Westphalian Institute of Technology in Aachen in June 2012, which was supported by the “German Association for Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, Psychosomatics and Neurology” (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Psychiatrie und Psychotherapie, Psychosomatik und Nervenheil- kunde) and its research program on the association’s history during the Nazi period between 1933 and 1945 (p. 7). The time period under analysis here marked a watershed in the history of psychiatry in all countries that had participated in the First World War, experiencing the dreadful effects of technological warfare and the resultant emergence of new mental diseases such as shellshock, irritable heart conditions, and war neurosis.

Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps

The American Historical Review, 2001

Ne er rv ve es s: : S So ol ld di ie er rs s a an nd d P Ps sy yc ch hi ia at tr ri is st ts s i in n t th he e T Tw we en nt ti ie et th h C Ce en nt tu ur ry y

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 1999

This article reviews the development of the historiography of Anglo-American psychiatry over the past quarter century, while passing attention to work on the history of psychiatry in Europe. The relationship between earlier and later work is stressed, and recent trends in the field assessed. ᭧ 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1. This is a curious phenomenon that doubtless deserves further examination in its own right, but the present article is scarcely the place to undertake such a task. 2. This constraint is more than purely geographical, of course, given the distinctive theoretical approaches to the subject that have emerged in particular national contexts: the influence of critical theory and the so-called Frankfurt School, for example, on the work of Klaus Dörner and his followers in Germany (see especially Dörner's Madmen and the Bourgeoisie (1981); and of Foucault and the Foucaultians in France, for example, Robert Castel, The Regulation of Madness: The Origins of Incarnation in France (1988). 3. The original edition appeared in 1961. A heavily abridged English translation-which is all most anglophones are acquainted with-appeared in 1965 as Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, Richard Howard (Trans.). For a series of recent essays on Foucault, by both partisans and critics, see A. Still & I. Velody (Eds.), Rewriting the History of Madness: Studies in Foucault's Histoire de la folie (1992).