The Importance of the First Year of War in Mental Disease

The importance of war as a factor in the causation of mental illness has been extensively studied in the past. Most investigators have come to the same general conclusions, namely that amongst serving troops there is no marked increase in the incidence of the severer forms of mental illness but a considerable increase in the less severe disorders, such as anxiety states and hysteria. A distinction, which has not been properly recognized, must be made between military service and actual warfare. It seems probable that men predisposed to the severer forms of mental illness might be rejected early in military service, and that the neurotic conditions occur largely amongst conscripts who are unsuited for military life and who develop them as a sort of environmental or occupational reaction against a mode of life for which they have