The war at home

When addressing mental wellbeing during the First World War, we probably think first and foremost of shell-shocked military personnel. Yet there were about 100 000 civilians in Britain's mental hospitals at the start of the 20th century, whose story goes far beyond warfare's indirect effects of dislocation, deprivation, and anxiety. For men, the largest single category of diagnosis on admission to four very different so-called lunatic asylums in or near London (Colney Hatch, Claybury, Napsbury, and Hanwell) was not a version of post-traumatic stress disorder; it was alcohol misuse.