The Lessons of Shell Shock
The global crisis wrought by the First World War prompted the birth of free mental health care for the treatment of shell shock and ‘war neuroses’.
Free mental health care began 100 years ago, after the First World War, when a handful of doctors and voluntary workers established clinics and hospitals that drew on the ‘talking therapies’ used to treat shell-shocked soldiers.
One of the first outpatient psychotherapy units in Britain was the Tavistock Clinic, which opened on 27 September 1920 at 51 Tavistock Square in the Bloomsbury area of London. ‘My dream has come true’, said its founder, the Scottish neurologist Hugh Crichton-Miller. He and six other doctors worked pro bono to treat early signs of mental illness, referred to then as functional mental disorders. Crichton-Miller wanted ‘to bring modern treatments for such conditions within reach of those who cannot afford specialists’ fees’. Students, clerks and housewives paid five shillings per session if they could afford to, otherwise the treatment was free. The Tavistock’s first patient was a child.
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