War Neurosis and Cultural Change in England, 1914-22: The Work of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into 'Shell-Shock'

The first world war fundamentally challenged inherited social and cultural ideas, including traditional views of mental illness and its treatment. The hordes of English veterans who suffered from warinduced mental illness, or what was then called 'shell-shock', raised the most complex and disturbing questions. Their sufferings not only challenged long-held medical opinions about the nature and treatment of mental illness, but seemed to demand that the very wellsprings of human behaviour be explored anew. Furthermore, so basic were the questions posed by the shell-shock crisis that they ultimately threatened a number of traditional moral values. New views of the mind brought in their wake ambivalence where formerly there had been certainty. An important manifestation of this transformation of values was the Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into 'Shell-Shock' which was issued in 1922. On 28 April 1920, Lord Southborough addressed the House of Lords regarding his motion to establish a committee to investigate the nature and treatment of'shell-shock' in the Great War.