He Lost Himself Completely

This book examines the largely forgotten group of Irish soldiers who suffered from shell shock and other mental troubles as a result of the war. In 1916, just two months after the Easter Rising, the Richmond War Hospital was established at Grangegorman in Dublin, on the grounds of the Richmond Asylum, to treat these soldiers. Stammering, mute and paralysed, depressed and haunted by voices and explosions in their minds, 362 soldiers were treated at the War Hospital between 1916 and 1919. This book tells their stories, based on their medical case histories drawn from previously unseen archives of the Richmond War Hospital. These are stories of shell fire and trauma, shell shock and despair, and intense human suffering. Professor Brendan Kelly is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at University College Dublin and Consultant Psychiatrist at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital.