It is, however, considered that many of such cases could, after recovery, be usefully employed in some form of auxiliary military duty. Part of the concern was that many British veterans were receiving pensions and had long-term disabilities. By 1939, some 120,000 British ex-servicemen had received final awards for primary psychiatric disability or were still drawing pensions – about 15% of all pensioned disabilities – and another 44,000 or so … were getting pensions for ‘soldier’s heart’ or Effort Syndrome. There is, though, much that statistics do not show, because in terms of psychiatric effects, pensioners were just the tip of a huge iceberg. War correspondent Philip Gibbs wrote:

Something was wrong. They put on civilian clothes again and looked to their mothers and wives very much like the young men who had gone to business in the peaceful days before August 1914. But they had not come back the same men. Something had altered in them. They were subject to sudden moods, and queer tempers, fits of profound depression alternating with a restless desire for pleasure. Many were easily moved to passion where they lost control of themselves, many were bitter in their speech, violent in opinion, frightening. One British writer between the wars wrote:

There should be no excuse given for the establishment of a belief that a functional nervous disability constitutes a right to compensation. This is hard saying.
Lancet, 1, 1915, pp. 316–320
Shephard, Ben. A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists, 1914–1994. London, Jonathan Cape, 2000. Wessely, S. "The Life and Death of Private Harry Farr" Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol 99, September 2006

External links

Shell Shock during World War I, by Professor Joanna Bourke - BBC
An Address on the Repression of War Experience, by W.H. Rivers, 4 December 1917
Our Present Needs a Past: A Historical Look at Shell Shock Tedx Talk by Annessa Stagner on YouTube