ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relationship between psychiatry, mental health, and the nation state during the twentieth century, with a specific focus on the impact of mass warfare on the understandings of mental health and mental illness, as well as the prestige and legitimacy of psychiatry as a discipline. It also considers the important legacy of the Vietnam War on the formation of post-traumatic stress disorder and outlines the more contemporary controversies over the adequacy of that diagnosis. Finally, the chapter uses the disputes over the ethics of military psychiatry in that conflict to discuss the position of psychiatry in repressive states across the twentieth century.
