Psychiatry in the British Army in the Second World War

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1958, this account of the work of psychiatrists in the British Army during the Second World War is based on the study of all available documents, published and unpublished, as well as on the author’s first-hand experience of the clinical and administrative aspects of Army psychiatry. It deals not only with the wartime problems presented by the high incidence of mental illness, and the large numbers of mentally backward and maladjusted men (as they were termed then) in the Service, but also with the methods developed for the selection and efficient use of personnel and officers in the face of acute shortage of man-power; the psychiatric aspects of discipline, morale, training and prolonged service overseas; the treatment and evacuation of psychiatric battle casualties in the forward areas, under difficult and varied conditions; the rehabilitation of disabled ex-servicemen, and the civil resettlement of repatriated prisoners of war.