AFTERMATH.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 215, 11 September 1931, Page 2

AFTERMATH.

WAR'S LONG SHADOW.

EVIIi EFFECTS OF MEMORIES.

NERVOUS EXHAUSTION AND MORAL. (By a Special Correspondent.) WASHINGTON, August 2. \ The long shadow ■of the world war .. still is falling over the minds of those who fought its battles. The open wounds in the minds of men formed a principal topic of discussion at the In- <■> ternafcional Congress of Military Medi-. cine just concluded at The Hague, complete reports of which have just . been received by the Public Health Service. • In the United States alone, Dr. Philip B Matz/of the United States Veterans' Bureau, told the -military doctors, the number of veterans afflicted with nervous and mental diseases is increasing ■ at such a rate, statistical studies show, that fifteen years hence there will be approximately 42,000 cases. This is more than double those now on the books of the Veterans' Bureau. The studies undertaken to forecast the future need of hospital space, Dr. Matz said, indicate that the increase in insanity among ex-service men ie being accelerated with „ age. In few cases, army doctors from the various Allied nations insisted, were the experiences of war solely responsible for the mental breakdowns,'but the terrors and memories of battle act" on nervous systems which were unstable at the start. This condition among the French veterans was emphasised by Colonel Fribourg-BJanc, of the Frencli Army,;, who declared that the nervous system, instead of becoming immunised to re-> peated emotional shocks of terror, apparently becomes more susceptible. Each euch experience increases the fear of the next one of the same kind, and this condition has continued long, after the..war. . . . . '. Battered and Defeated. What Colonel Fribourg-Blanc" called the "syndrome post-.einotionelle," which followed ■ some frightful experience on v ■ the battlefield and was ■characterised by mental confusion, disorientation,' incoherent speech and outbursts of weepingor laughter, still persists in the Frencli hospitals, he said. He also pointed out that it tends to become intensified, little by little. The neurasthenia, or nervous exhaustion caused by the war life, often left permanent effects, he said. Many casee of paranoia, with systema- : tic delusions made up entirely of war memories, still are coming to French hospitals,- he said. Dr. Smith Ely Jeliffe, noted American psychiatrist, told, the congress that "There are still distributed through all the- States of the Union an ever present horde of the maimed, the battered and the defeated.". The evil effects of the \yar memories, often deliberately forced '_ out of conscious memory, are hy no means'completely represented by those actually .under treatment, he declared.'; They show up in a lowered moral which prevents many veterans from.getting the - ; most possible out of life. ' The effect of these. memqcjes he compared to actual wounds of the physical nervous system which cut it off at varioue levels. "Every war psychoneurotic," Dr. Jeliffe said, "has repressed material which interferes with Ms reaching a high state of.moral. His resistances keep, him always on the alert. Sickness i 3 an asset; unconsciously arrived at. Malingering as a diagnosis is worthless, but it is itself an illness not explained by the epithet. The war residual has come to live his life apart. His tendency to per-, mit himself to be hospitalised is a part of his withdrawal from the world of reality." Unconscious Malingering. Some of the.remote effects of the waron American veterans were presented before the International Congress by Major Patrick S. Madigan, Major C. C. Odom and Major William C. Porter of the U.S. Army Medical Corps. They pointed out that the number of hypochondriacs, who always claim to be sick, but without any organic basis for then , . complaints, was email during the war itself, but now is quite large among the veterans. This condition is seldom conscious malingering, they explained. The men actually feel sick, although the generis of the condition is found in tho accepted military doctrine that a sick man cannot be expected to fight or work. Thus, .they pointed out- that factors which ordinarily inhibit visceral sensatione from coming into consciousness have been eo weakened that the patient is acutely aware of all of them. With any emotional experience he is likely to become sick at the.stpmach> ; : "In the post-war neuroses, whose number is increasing tremendously to this day," says the report of these officers, "the attitude of the Government towards the veterans has contributed a great deal, however praiseworthy it may be in otherrespects. In its efforts to do justice it has placed a premium on invalidism, the economic dependence of which the weakling has taken advantage. The scope of compensation and hospitalisation legislation has been steadily enlarged. This, to the individual who is constitutionally, inferior and hae acquired a psychopathic viewpoint, , is a suggestion that he will', have to be sick to receive benefits. The habit of work soon becomes replaced by a habit of dependence on others for a livelihood. To excuse himself in his own eyee and in the eyes of the world he must have symptoms, and these are not wanting."—(N.A.N. A.) .-.,■■■