Research Uncovers Work of PTSD Pioneer During WW1

CARLISLE, Pa. - Aug. 1, 2014 - PRLog -- America's first military psychiatrist, Thomas W. Salmon, was a pioneer in mental-health research during World War I, and Professor of English Wendy Moffat, biographer and social historian of the American and European modern era, has uncovered Salmon’s story. What she has found is that not only was Salmon a groundbreaker, but his work has had a lasting influence on public-health psychiatry and shines a light on what we now know as PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).

Salmon published a detailed report on his research that proposed pre-screening recruits, organizing base/veterans hospitals and treatment centers, and the recruitment and training of medical staff and social workers to care for the patients.

“He anticipates the social costs of the war on American society,” Moffat says, noting that Salmon thought “war neurosis” was, as he called it, "a perfectly legitimate way to respond to the terrible trauma of that kind of combat, which no American had ever seen.”

www.dickinson.edu

Watch an interview with Professor Moffat (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJzSDshLDXw).