Civil War Veterans and Mental Illness – Young Historians Series

Discover how Civil War veterans and doctors grappled with mental health.

Dr. Dillon Jackson Carroll will discuss his research on the contrasting beliefs of veterans and asylum doctors regarding the cause of mental illness among Civil War veterans at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine on Saturday, October 14, 2017 at 2:30 PM.

Civil War veterans believed and argued that the mental illness that afflicted their comrades, was the result of a vague condition they called “played out” or “broken down.” These terms were broad and were meant to convey the multiple physical and mental stressors of the war. These terms organically spread among veterans as a soldier’s explanation for mental illness. The doctors, however, did not always agree with the soldiers’ diagnosis.

Dr. Dillon Jackson Carroll received his PhD in History from the University of Georgia, Athens in 2016. He has taught at several colleges since 2014. Carroll currently teaches at Hunter College, City University of New York. His first book, Invisible Wounds: Veterans of the American Civil War in the Gilded Age, is under advanced contract.

This presentation is part of the 2017 Young Historians Series at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine. This series of presentations spotlights emerging scholars and their research into the field of the Civil War and Civil War medicine. They will take place in the Delaplaine-Randall Conference Room and are included with admission to Museum and are free to NMCWM members.