Craiglockhart hospital originally started in 1877 as a hydropathic institute. However, with the outbreak of World War 1, it was to be used as a military hospital specialising in phychiatric care for the treatment of shell-shocked officers. As the war progressed this was to be just one of many hospitals treating patients with shell-shock and remained doing so until 1919.
The man that started the change in opinion of metal health was William Rivers. He did not agree with the army's use of a stiff upper lip and instead believed that talking about traumas witnessed was the best course of treatment for his patience. Both poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen received treatment from William and in later wrote about their experiences.
Willaim taught soldiers to talk about their experiences and the horrors they had faced. Quite rightly, he saw Shell-Shock as an illness that needed specialist care, unlike the army who thought Shell-Shock was a form of Cowardice, punishable by death. The army thought Shell-Shock was nothing but a lack of moral fibre and sent many soldiers to be court marshalled.
Nearly all soldiers that fought during World War 1 would have suffered some form of Shell-Shock, even if it went on undiagnosed. The constant bombardment and fighting left soldiers scared and jumpy. They had the inability to reason, sleep, walk or even talk and many sufferers were reported to have a thousand yard stare - the blank unfocused gaze of a battle-weary soldier.
In the years that followed the term Shell-Shock was replaced by the term many of us use today as Combat Stress Reaction. The investigations into its causes have meant that it is now a form of stress on the brain rather that a "shock" that you will quickly recover from.
Symptoms reported during World War 1 included headaches, dizziness, a constant tremor, tinnitus and a hypersensitivity to noises. All the these were common-place for someone suffering from a head injury but with no physical injury to be seen, the army refused to listen.
By 1917, the term of Shell-Shock was banned as an illness by the British army and reports were even band from being written in medical journals. Someone suffering from the above symptoms would simply be given a few days of to rest before being sent straight back to the front to re-join the fighting.
When these soldiers returned home, they were different, changed somehow. Many wives and children who had been looking forward to their husbands and fathers coming home, found themselves scared an confused. War Correspondent Philip Gibbs was able to correctly explain what many peoples lives were like,
"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".
This led to many families lives being changed forever, for generations. Children became witness or victims of domestic violence and many wives were raped by their husbands as they lost control. The signs were there - women who walked around sporting a black eye or cut, where they had "walked into a door". Children became skinner and pale, afraid of adults. Some deaths even occurred, although these were more than often covered up.
All of this effected the children the most I believe as many mothers told them not to mention anything. They learnt to bottle everything up inside them, which then changed them as a person and changed how they reacted when they had their own families. Violence at home was accepted by many as the norm.
It is only really in the last fifteen to twenty years that mental attitudes to this has changed and that people, today, can be moved temporary from harms way, until the person in question has received individual treatment and care.
Today, after thousands of investigations and case-studies, we now have to main branches of what was known as Shell-Shock. There is Combat Stress Reaction and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
The list of possible symptoms include the slowing of reaction time, slowness of thought, difficulty prioritising tasks, exhaustion, indecision and lack of concentration.
It also affects the nervous system. Some of the symptoms include the inability to relax, shaking and tremors, sweating, incontinence, nightmares and flashbacks, a heightened sense of threat and the mistrust of others.
A more detailed knowledge has meant that it is easier to see if someone is suffering from this illness, so that they can receive help in order to get better. It is no longer an illness from which it suffer with for the rest of your life, but instead an illness which is treatable in time.
Charities have been set up to help detect and diagnose early signs as well as help soldiers and their families adjust to civilian life together. It has opened the pathway for the future of mental help, so that now anybody who needs to can receive treatment for mental health illnesses. Over the last ten years, the issues surrounding mental health have been discussed more and more, proving that it is now okay to talk about it and ask for help, proving that a stiff upper lip isn't needed.
This wouldn't have been made possible if it wasn't for William Rivers and his dedicated staff at Craiglockhart hospital getting soldiers to talk about their experiences one hundred years ago.
For more information on mental health and to find out how you can help visit:
Mind - www.mind.org.uk
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - www.ptsd.org.uk
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