Signature Wounds

The Untold Story of the Military's Mental Health Crisis

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4156750
AutoresDale Smith (0000-0002-9881-8067, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, autor correspondente), Dale C Smith (Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland)
Ano2020
Volume107
Fascículo2
Páginas551-551
Data de publicação2020-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jaaa311
OpenAlexW3089286619
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6

This is a very good book and deserves a wide readership! I do not like the phrase “signature wounds” and like the concept even less; I am often skeptical of contemporary history. But I do not like war, crime, discrimination, crooked politicians, botched diplomacy, and a host of other things that have important histories. For others like me, I repeat, this is a very good book and deserves a wide readership. David Kieran is interested in war and culture in contemporary America, and he has done his homework for this volume: tracing the origin of the phrase “signature wound” to the journalist Gregg Zoroya in the spring of 2005 and discussing how politicians (a young senator named Barack Obama used it a month later) and other journalists (in the Washington Post and New York Times, among others) gave it currency in the final years of the first decade of the century. In addition to utilizing publications, Kieran has talked to many of the figures involved. Most of this public use of the phrase had political purposes; some people, such as Zoroya, were advocating for better care of soldiers, sailors, airman, and marines. Others, such as Senator Obama, increasingly used mental health care as a way to attack the George W. Bush administration and the global war on terror without appearing unpatriotic or unsupportive of those in harm's way. Neither community was particularly rigorous or careful about the definition of “signature wounds”—what the signature meant, how it was a wound, and/or how, if at all, it related to the medical diagnoses used in the Departments of Defense (Dod), Veterans Affairs (Va) or in the professional communities of American psychiatry and psychology

Audience measurement · Criminology · Harm · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Terrorism · Gun Ownership and Violence Research · History · Law · Medicine