Research, ideas, and leadership for a more secure, peaceful world

Past Event
In-Person
Seminar

Bad Hygiene: Military Psychiatry and Community Mental Health in the Vietnam War

Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

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. There, they provided long or short-term treatment to service members and their dependents, and they advised command on matters of the mind. 

For more information, contact susan_lynch@hks.harvard.edu

Date: Time: - Location: One Brattle Square, 350

Speaker
Anne Boniface

Anne Boniface
U.S. troops addicted to heroin sit together at an Army amnesty center
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. 

Speaker: Annie Boniface, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

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?

Admittance is on a first come–first served basis.  Tea and Coffee Provided.