Over the course of the United States' war in Vietnam, psychiatrists stationed at Army bases in the United States and in non-combat areas abroad wrote monthly to the Chief of Psychiatry and Neurology. They drafted their accounts not at hospitals, but at out-patient clinics called Mental Hygiene Consultation Services (MHCS). There, they provided long or short-term treatment to service members and their dependents, and they advised command on matters of the mind. The reports of MHCS psychiatrists offer a window into both the mental lives of young people staring down deployment and into the workings of Army psychiatry at the time. Might the wartime practices and protocols of Mental Hygiene centers shed light on the mental health reckoning that followed the war?
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Photo Caption: In this August 1971 file photo, U.S. troops addicted to heroin sit together at an Army amnesty center in Long Binh, Vietnam. In the 1960s and 1970s, heroin use surged, prompted in part by Vietnam War soldiers who were exposed to it while fighting overseas. Unlike the doctor-driven previous drug epidemics, this one victimized poor inner-city neighborhoods most.
Speakers and Presenters
Annie Boniface, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program