Dear H-Madness readers,

You may be interested in the recently published article Barbed wire disease: British medical and lay prisoners of war and theirperceptions of mental illness arising from captivity, by Gabriel Lawson, which appeared in the journal History of Psychiatry. The article is freely downloadable. Below is the abstract of the article.

“This article examines medical and lay perceptions of captivity-induced psychopathologies observed among British prisoners of war during the Second World War. Drawing on medical reports, POW memoirs, and camp publications, it explores how both medical and lay observers understood captivity-induced neurotic illness as a collective, environmentally driven disorder rather than an individual pathology. By reintroducing ‘barbed wire disease’ into the historical narrative, this paper challenges trauma-centred interpretations of military psychiatry and highlights the social and environmental dimensions of mental illness in captivity, offering new perspectives on rehabilitation, resilience, and the boundaries between mental health and ill-health”.