Military traumatic brain injury: a challenge straddling neurology and psychiatry

Military psychiatry, a new subcategory of psychiatry, has become an invaluable, intangible effect of the war. In this review, we begin by examining related military research, summarizing the related epidemiological data, neuropathology, and the research achievements of diagnosis and treatment technology, and discussing its comorbidity and sequelae. To date, advances in neuroimaging and molecular biology have greatly boosted the studies on military traumatic brain injury (TBI). In particular, in terms of pathophysiological mechanisms, several preclinical studies have identified abnormal protein accumulation, blood–brain barrier damage, and brain metabolism abnormalities involved in the development of TBI. As an important concept in the field of psychiatry, TBI is based on organic injury, which is largely different from many other mental disorders. Therefore, military TBI is both neuropathic and psychopathic, and is an emerging challenge at the intersection of neurology and psychiatry.

Introduction

This chapter examines an array of files within the context of the time to understand how and why physicians made certain diagnoses and proposed treatments to patients of World War I. It analyses the practices and perceptions that were prominent in the system of military psychiatry during World War I. It also considers the process of diagnosing dissent, which is an endeavor that German physicians focused more on the medical part than on the moral end. This chapter investigates that German wartime psychiatry during World War I concentrated on the diagnosis and treatment of the Kriegszitterer or shell-shocked soldiers. It identifies German soldiers that were presented with a notorious mixture of symptoms that were labelled as hysterics.

Soldati e neuropsichiatria nell'Italia della Grande Guerra

Against the backdrop of a critical reflection on the psychiatric concepts of organicism and predisposition to mental illness, the research investigates the relationship between psychiatry and the Great War from a perspective that considers the complexity of the orientations assumed by both the Italian alienists on war pathologies and the health practices implemented towards soldiers. The study highlights the comparison/clash between two totally different approaches forced to coexist during the conflict: on one side, the one from military psychiatry, and on the other the distinctive one from civil asylums. The two perspectives were not always clearly separated, but it is possible to detect a constant tension between the duties towards the war effort and the professional ethics dictated by the neuropsychiatric discipline.

Books

The Webcam as an Emerging Cinematic Medium, Paula Albuquerque (2018)Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 244pp., ISBN: 9789462985582 (hbk), 120.00, ISBN 9789048536733 (ebk)The Flaherty: Decades in the Cause of Independent Cinema, Patricia R. Zimmermann and Scott MacDonald (2017)Indiana University Press, 360pp., ISBN: 9780253026248 (hbk), 25.00Governing Visions of the Real, Lars Weckbecker (2016)Intellect, 200pp., ISBN: 9781783204953 (hbk), 86.00Los Angeles Documentary and the Production of Public History, 1958-1977, Joshua Glick (2018)University of California Press, 277pp., ISBN: 9780520293717 (pbk), 34.95Traumatic Imprints: Cinema, Military Psychiatry, and the Aftermath of War, Noah Tsika (2018)University of California Press, 300pp., ISBN: 9780520297647 (pbk), 34.95