1. Scholars often argue that Patton did not believe that shell shock qualified as a true battle wound. Recent scholarship, however, contends that Patton understood that shell shock existed; in Patton’s opinion, though, true shell shock needed to completely incapacitate the person to qualify as a justifiable illness; See Martin Blumenson, The Patton Papers, 1940-1945 (Boston: De Capo, 1974), 331. Quoted in Lovelace, Alexander G., “‘Slap Heard around the World’: George Patton and Shell Shock,” Parameters 49, no. 3 (Autumn 2019): 79 Google Scholar; Lovelace, “‘Slap Heard around the World,’” 80; A Mother, “What People Talk about: Letters from the Editor’s Mail, A Word for Gen. Patton,” Daily Boston Globe, November 25, 1943, 24; S. MacFann, Jr., “Letters to the Editor: On the Patton Case,” The Sun, December 1, 1943, 12; “Indiana Family Cites Son’s Letter Telling of Slap and Kick Administered by Patton,” New York Times, November 24, 1943, 6; Bond, Douglas, The Love and Fear of Flying (New York: International Universities Press, 1952), 60–61 Google Scholar.

2. Brand, Jeanne L., “The National Mental Health Act of 1946: A Retrospect,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 39, no. 3 (May–June 1965): 236 Google ScholarPubMed.

3. Linker, Beth, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 1 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Linker, War’s Waste, 1–5, 8–9; Kinder, John, Paying with their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 117 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4. Linker, War’s Waste, 3; To avoid redundancy, this essay will use “psychiatric,” “mental,” and “psychological,” interchangeably as adjectives. When used as adjectives, there is not a significant difference. But it will be more specific when regarding psychiatry and psychology as professions and sciences, as there are significant differences.

5. Historian Gerald Grob wrote that an 1854 presidential veto of a “land-grant bill” gave state governments the responsibility to care for their mentally ill while allowing the federal government to avoid mental health policy. See Grob, Gerald, From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; For information on conscientious objectors serving in the public mental hospitals, see Brand, “The National Mental Health Act of 1946: A Retrospect,” 237–38; Grob, From Asylum to Community, 3–4; Brand, “The National Mental Health Act of 1946: A Retrospect,” 244; Grob, From Asylum to Community, 45–48.

6. Quotation from Daddis, Gregory, Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 69 Google Scholar; May, Elaine Tyler, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era, revised ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 63–66 Google Scholar.

7. On post–World War I activism, see Keene, Jennifer D., Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America (Baltimore; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ortiz, Stephen R., ed., Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics: New Perspectives on Veterans in the Modern United States (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ortiz, Stephen R., Beyond the Bonus March and GI Bill: How Veteran Politics Shaped the New Deal Era (New York: New York University Press, 2010)Google Scholar. For information on the limited American engagement and its consequences in World War I, see Crotty, Martin, Diamant, Neil J., and Edele, Mark, The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020), 22 Google Scholar. Horwitz, Allan V., PTSD: A Short History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018), 88–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kinder, Paying with their Bodies, 277–80.

8. Crotty, Diamant, and Edele, The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century, 111–15. Other veterans feared that deteriorating mental health threatened the military’s human resources; See United States Congress, Senate Committee on Education and Labor, National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Education and Labor, United States Senate, Seventy-ninth Congress, second session, on S. 1160, a bill to provide for, foster, and aid in coordinating research relating to neuropsychiatric disorders; to provide for more effective methods of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of such disorders; to establish the National Neuropsychiatric Institute: and for other purposes. March 6, 7, and 8, 1946 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 47 Google Scholar (written statement of Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, director of the National Selective Service System); Although this article will examine many veterans and organizations, it will forgo discussion of William Menninger due to the vast amount of literature dedicated to his service as a military psychiatrist in World War II.

9. For a dedicated study on the NMHA, see Brand, Jeanne L., “The National Mental Health Act of 1946: A Retrospect,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 39, no. 3 (May–June 1965): 231–45Google ScholarPubMed; Three important studies that specifically discuss the NMHA are Greene, Rebecca Schwartz, Breaking Point: The Ironic Evolution of Psychiatry in World War II (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Grob, From Asylum to Community; Herman, Ellen, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkley: University of California Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For select works concerning disabled veterans, rehabilitation, and their influence on society, see Adler, Jessica, Burdens of War: Creating the United States Veterans Health System (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Gerber, David, Disabled Veterans in History, revised and enlarged edition (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Jennings, Audra, Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Kinder, Paying with Their Bodies, Beth Linker, War’s Waste: Rehabilitation in World War I America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); and Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other select works include Gerald Grob, “Creation of the National Institute of Mental Health,” Public Health Reports 111, no. 4 (July–August 1996): 378–81, Pickren, Wade E. and Schneider, Stanley F., ed., Psychology and the National Institute of Mental Health: A Historical Analysis of Science, Practice, and Policy (Washington DC: American Psychological Association, 2005)Google Scholar; Pols, Han and Oak, Stephanie, “War & Military Mental Health: The US Psychiatric Response in the 20th Century,” American Journal of Public Health 97, no. 12 (December 2007): 2132–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Adler, Burdens of War, 2, 6, 12–15; Linker, War’s Waste, 4–5. For more information on the statistics concerning World War II psychiatric disqualifications, see Greene, Breaking Point, Introduction and Part I.

11. For statistics, see United States Congress, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing before a subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Seventy-Ninth Congress, First Session on H.R. 2550, a bill to provide for, foster, and aid in coordinating research relating to neuropsychiatric disorders; to provide for more effective methods of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of such disorders; to establish the National Neuropsychiatric Institute; and for other purposes. September 18, 19, and 21, 1945 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1945), 5 (written statement of Watson B. Miller, acting administrator of the Federal Security Agency, to Clarence F. Lea, the chairperson of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce); National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 36 (statement of Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, director of the Selective Service System); National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 136 (written statement of Maj. Gen. Norman T. Kirk, surgeon general, United States Army); Greene, Breaking Point, 1–3; Popular media, such as advice literature and films, also emphasized the “startling” consequences of psychological illness. Scholar Christina Jarvis includes an informative section concerning veterans’ psychiatric problems and how popular media portrayed them. For example, in his book, The Veteran Comes Home, William Waller pushes “for better medical treatment for and less discrimination toward the psychoneurotic veteran in order to avoid the economic and social readjustment problems,” but he also hints that the psychologically ill veteran was “a threat to both economic and domestic order.” Other works focused more on destigmatizing emotional issues. Morton Thompson’s How to Be a Civilian emphasized that veterans who psychologically suffered needed to visit a professional for help. Hollywood movies also became a popular channel through which Americans learned of the prevalence of mental illnesses among veterans. These films include Pride of the Marines, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Till the End of the Time. For more information and examples see Christina Jarvis, “‘If He Comes Home Nervous’: U.S. World War II Neuropsychiatric Casualties and Postwar Masculinities,” The Journal of Men’s Studies 17, no. 2 (Spring 2009): 101–12; Kinder, Paying with their Bodies, 265–71; Brand, “The National Mental Health Act of 1946: A Retrospect,” 236; Grob, “Creation of the National Institute of Mental Health,” 378–79; “Person Record: Robert H. Felix,” the Office of History, the National Institutes of Mental Health, https://onih.pastperfectonline.com/byperson?keyword=Felix%2C+Robert+H; Grob, From Asylum to Community, 5:48–52.

12. Concerning the Act’s purpose, see National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 1; National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 1; Hearings on H.R. 2550, 2–3. Out of the combined forty-seven in-person witnesses during the House and Senate hearings, twenty-one of them were veterans. Forty-five percent of the witnesses in the hearings had some connection to the military. This is a large percentage considering that this bill was intended for the entire population of the United States. Veteran witnesses from the House hearings include Albert Baggs, John Baird, Douglas D. Bond, Francis Braceland, Allen Challmer, Robert Felix, Lewis Hershey, Watson B. Miller, George Stevenson, and Edward Strecker. Veteran witnesses from the Senate hearings include Albert Baggs, Daniel Blaine, Karl Bowman, Francis Braceland, Robert Felix, Lewis Hershey, William Menninger, Watson Miller, Robert Nystrom, John Williamson, and Dael Wolfle. Although these witnesses were veterans from different wars and periods, not all of them testified on behalf of veterans or veteran organizations. For example, George Stevenson was a veteran, but during the hearings, he represented the National Committee for Mental Hygiene; see “In Memoriam: George S. Stevenson, M.D. 1892-1983,” The American Journal of Psychiatry 140, no. 10 (October 1983): 1369. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 1; National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 1; Hearings on H.R. 2550, 2–3.

13. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 5 (statement of Claude Pepper, chairman of the Subcommittee on Education and Labor); Sparrow, James T., Warfare State: World War II Americans and the Age of Big Government (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 6 Google Scholar.

14. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 5–6 (written statement of Watson B. Miller, acting administrator of the Federal Security Agency, to Clarence F. Lea, the chairperson of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce); 79 Cong. Rec. H2348 (March 1946); National Mental Health Act of 1946, Pub. L. No. 79-487, 60 Stat. (1946).

15. Quote concerning the nation’s inability to “cope” with mental illness from Brand, “The National Mental Health Act of 1946: A Retrospect,” 243; Sparrow, Warfare State, 243; 79 Cong. Rec. H2293 (daily ed. March 14, 1946) (statement of John Gwynne); 79 Cong. Rec. H2294 (daily ed. March 14, 1946) (statement of Clarence Brown); For Robert Taft’s quote about federal funds and “drying up,” see National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 13–14 (statement of Surgeon General Thomas Parran, United States Public Health Service). Winfred Overholser, the superintendent of St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital also opposed the NMHA. He disagreed with the provisions of creating a National Institute of Mental Health. He believed that the government should disperse funding to existing institutions, such as St. Elizabeth’s, rather than invest in a new system, see Grob, From Asylum to Community, 50. For more information on the Federal Government’s expanded role in the social welfare of America during the New Deal, see Badger, Anthony, The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-1940 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bindas, Kenneth J., The New Deal and American Society, 1933-1941 (New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022)Google Scholar.

16. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 26–27 (statement of Dr. A. J. Carlson, president and scientific director, Research Council on Problems of Alcohol); National National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 27 (statement of Miss Frances Hartshorne, executive secretary, Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene).

17. Sparrow, Warfare State, 253–54.

18. This section will repeatedly refer to the National Mental Health Act (NMHA) during the congressional hearings. It is, however, important to point out that during the hearings, the title of the bill was still the National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act. Thus, all witnesses testified on behalf of this act which later became the NMHA. For the purposes of this paper, I will use the NMHA interchangeably with the National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act.

19. Burtin, Olivier, “Veterans as a Social Movement: The American Legion, the First Hoover Commission, and the Making of the American Welfare State,” Social Science History 44, no. 2 (Summer 2020): 338–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Burtin, Olivier, A Nation of Veterans: War, Citizenship, and the Welfare State in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022), 47–49 Google Scholar.

20. For MacNider’s quote, see American Legion National Rehabilitation Committee, The American Legion at Work for the Sick and Disabled (1922), 157, quoted in Kinder, Paying with Their Bodies, 156; Burtin, “Veterans as a Social Movement,” 338–39; Kinder, Paying with Their Bodies, 154; Adler, Burdens of War, 125, 255.

21. Figure One. Wallgren, “Helpful Hints for ‘Psychopathic’ GIs,” The National Legionnaire, October 1945, 7, https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12203/5855.

22. Dumas, Alexander G. and Keen, Grace, A Psychiatric Primer for the Veteran’s Family and Friends (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1945), 6, 8, 9, 202Google Scholar, Quoted in Kinder, Paying with Their Bodies, 267.

23. Wallgren, “Helpful Hints for ‘Psychopathic’ GIs,” The National Legionnaire, 7.

24. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 71–72 (statement of A. N. Baggs, medical consultant, American Legion); National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 73–75 (statement of A. N. Baggs, medical consultant, American Legion); National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 71–72 (statement of A. N. Bagg).

25. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 71–72 (statement of John C. Williamson, assistant legislative representative of the Veterans of Foreign Wars).

26. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 71 (statement of John Williamson); National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 71–72 (statement of John Williamson).

27. Brand, “The National Mental Health Act of 1946,” 241–42; Ellen Herman, The Romance of American Psychology: Political Culture in the Age of Experts (Berkley: University of California Press, 1995), 246–48; National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 100–1 (statement of Captain Robert Nystrom, United States Marine Corps Reserve); National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 101–2 (statement of Robert Nystrom); Brand, “The National Mental Health Act of 1946,” 242.

28. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 102 (statement of Robert Nystrom).

29. Dr. Rebecca Greene’s recently published book, Breaking Point: The Ironic Evolution of Psychiatry in World War II clearly shows that even during the war, top government officials questioned psychiatry’s uses and purposes. With the thousands of psychiatric casualties mounting during the war, military leaders, including George C. Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, believed that psychiatrists’ intense focus on preinduction psychiatric screenings, intended to weed out those most likely to break under combat stress and reintegration, proved that the field had little use. In a leaked January 1944 memorandum, Marshall criticized psychiatrists for being “overeager” and evacuating too many psychiatric casualties to hospitals. Following this leaked memo, Dwight Eisenhower penned a “Dear General Letter” and “ordered his commanders not to evacuate any ‘psychoneurotic’ from the theater until they had determined by ‘actual test’ that he was not fit for any type of duty.” See Greene, Breaking Point, 146–47. Greene asserts psychiatry slowly began to gain authority and prestige in 1944 when military psychiatrists eschewed their emphasis on screening and focused on the prevention and treatment of psychiatric casualties. See Greene, Breaking Point, 6–7.

30. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 31 (statement of Francis Braceland, chief, Neuropsychiatric Branch, Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, United States Navy); National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 28–32 (statement of Francis Braceland).

31. Brand, “The National Mental Health Act of 1946: A Retrospect,” 232; National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 66–67 (statement of Captain Francis J. Braceland, chief, Neuropsychiatry Division, United States Navy).

32. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 65–66 (statement of Major D. D. Bond, chief, Psychiatric Branch, Office of the Air Surgeon, War Department); National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 65–66 (statement of Douglas Bond).

33. For more information about the nomenclature, see Bond, The Love and Fear of Flying, 150–51. For greater discussions on flying fatigue and lack of moral fiber, see Mark Wells, Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Aircrew Experience in the Second World War (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 60–89, 161–86.

34. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 55–58 (statement of Col. Samuel A. Challman, deputy director, Division of Neuropsychiatry, Surgeon General’s Office, War Department).

35. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 56 (statement of Samuel Challman).

36. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 54–58 (statement of Samuel Challman).

37. Grob, From Asylum to Community, 51; Herman, The Romance of American Psychology, 245; National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 47 (statement of Major General Lewis B. Hershey, director, National Selective Service System).

38. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 37 (statement of Lewis Hershey).

39. For information on the 4F discharges see Greene, Breaking Point, 101–3, 118.

40. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on S. 1160, 47 (statement of Lewis Hershey); For more information on “false positives” in the psychiatric screenings and the inability to correctly classify draftees, see Edgar Jones, Shell Shock to PTSD: Military Psychiatry from 1900 to the Gulf War (London: Psychology Press, 2006), 107–9.

41. National Neuropsychiatric Institute Act: Hearing on H.R. 2550, 37 (statement of Maj. Gen. Lewis B. Hershey, director, Selective Service System).

42. Lovelace, “‘Slap Heard around the World,’” 88–90.

43. Crotty, Diamant, and Edele, The Politics of Veteran Benefits in the Twentieth Century, 9, 111–15; 79 Cong. Rec. H2299 (daily ed. March 14, 1946) (statement of Walter Judd) [my italics].

44. 79 Cong. Rec. H2299 (March 14, 1946) (statement of Walter Judd); Other congresspersons also explicitly expressed support for the Act because it would help veterans. Arthur Miller (R-Nebraska) believed the country needed to do more to aid mentally ill veterans. He supported the bill because it would bolster hospital treatment of the psychologically ill veteran, which, in turn, would save the United States a large amount of money. Miller also did not want to see returning veterans psychologically decline upon return to the United States; he wanted to ensure they could be healthy enough reintegrate into civilian life and obtain a job, see 79 Cong. Rec. H2292–2293 (March 14, 1946) (statement of Arthur Miller).

45. Brand, ““The National Mental Health Act of 1946: A Retrospect,” 245.

46. For quote on the transformation of psychiatry, see Greene, Breaking Point, 250–51; “National Institute of Mental Health: Mission,” The National Institutes of Health, updated October 12, 2021, https://www.nih.gov/about-nih/what-we-do/nih-almanac/national-institute-mental-health-nimh.