• HOME
• THE LANGUAGE OF MADNESS
• THE ASYLUM
• • Asylum Design
  • Patient Buildings
• SOCIETY
• • Urban & Rural Life
  • Class & Gender
  • The Hysterical Female
  • The Evils of "Self-Abuse"
  • Family
  • Visitors
• LEGISLATION
• • Legislative Influence
  • Origins of Legislation and the Criminality of Insanity
  • Teenaged Years: Marked Custody Transition
  • Turn of the Century: Voluntary Admissions
  • Updated Act: The Mental Hospital Act
• SUPERINTENDANTS
• STAFF
• • Working at the LAI
  • Hiring Practices
  • Rules for Employees
  • Employee Roles in Moral Therapy
  • Doctors at LAI
  • Doctor Connections to UWO
  • Training School for Nurses
  • Attendants
  • General Staff
• PATIENT PERSPECTIVE
• • Introduction
  • Patient Art
  • Patient Letters
  • Their Voice
• MEDICAL TREATMENTS
• • Medical Treatment Introduction
  • Use of Restraints
  • Drug and Alcohol
  • Hydrotherapy
  • Female Surgeries
  • Neurosyphilis
  • Shock Therapy
  • Lobotomies
• MORAL THERAPY
• • Moral Therapy Introduction
  • Labour
  • Amusements
  • Diet
  • Religion
• THE WORLD WARS
• • Before the First World War
  • During the First World War
  • After the First World War
  • The First World War and the LAI
  • First World War Veterans at the LAI
  • The Second World War
• ORAL INTERVIEWS

After the First World War

Following the war, treatment options for affected veterans improved. Particularly in Britain, long-term asylum care became widely available, due in part to a better understanding of the condition. Additionally, military officials were later embarrassed because during the war some shell shocked soldiers, of many nationalities, had been executed for what had then been considered cowardice.

Veterans in Southwestern Ontario could receive treatment at the Ontario Hospital, London, or at Westminster Hospital, London. Established in 1918, Westminster began as a military hospital. After the First World War, it was used as a hospital for mentally ill veterans.

The inter-war years saw developments in civilian psychiatry that would benefit military psychiatry during the Second World War. Especially among the Allied nations, there came to be a greater deal of compassion and humanization in available treatments. Soldiers in the Second World War tended to receive care that included rest and relaxation, or simple talk and drug therapies.