A War of Nerves

A War of Nerves was an impulse buy about a year ago from Brotherhood Books, and it's taken me a long time to read it -- I'd read a chapter at a time in between my other non-fiction books, because it was pretty dense stuff, though fascinating. Ben Shephard traces the history of the military and the treatment of mental illness in soldiers, from the phenomenon of 'shakes' and shell shock in the First World War, all the way through to PTSD suffered by combatants in the Falklands War. He examines the influence of a handful of charismatic doctors and psychiatrists, who were able to promote their own favoured treatment method. Various theories and treatments swung in and out of fashion, from a brisk, robust talking-to by a senior officer, and encouragement not to let the other men down, all the way to elaborate, personalised therapy in a specialised setting, which in Shephard's view, made the soldiers see themselves as irreparably damaged.

Shephard seems quite averse to psychiatry in general, noting unfavourably the 'industry' that sprang up around Vietnam veterans and what he calls 'the culture of trauma,' where everyone who experienced combat was almost expected to be broken by it. Shephard prefers the matter-of-fact approach of earlier doctors, who pragmatically gave exhausted soldiers a chance to rest away from the front line, and then sent them back to the fray. He rightly points out the powerful effect of expectations on the way that soldiers cope with the horrors of battle, but it's telling that he ends the book with an anecdote where a boatload of sailors had to pick up a load of bodies and body parts and take them back to harbour, and they deal (apparently effectively) with this horrific experience by singing songs and having a stiff drink together. I'm not sure that I'm entirely convinced.