Art therapy in The Great War: treating WWI battlefield malaise through drawing. From the article:

A nurse’s lost book has revealed unseen sketches and writing from World War One, created by soldiers recovering at a Glasgow hospital. Jean Thomson’s journal, dated 1917, gives an insight into how mentally-scarring conditions like shell shock were treated during the conflict. She gathered the collection of “darkly humorous” work – poking fun at battlefield injuries and Trench Foot – at Merryflats War Hospital in Govan….

Jean, who qualified as a doctor in the 1920s, encouraged her patients to draw and write to aid their rehabilitation. Art therapy is now commonly used to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) among ex-service personnel….

Soldiers treated at Merryflats hospital included those wounded at the Battle of Vimy Ridge near Calais, France in April 1917. Over 3,500 British and Canadian troops died while about 7,000 were wounded during three days of fighting. The facility had previously been a poorhouse and psychiatric hospital before being requisitioned as a military hospital in 1914….

Hanson’s auctioneer Charles Hanson, will put the book under the hammer, said encouraging soldiers to find a creative outlet helped them deal with their mental and physical scars. “Discoveries like this open our eyes to history and offer a glimpse of the character of men and women caught up in WW1,” he said. “Jean encouraged patients to draw and write to aid rehabilitation and page after page is taken up by sketches and words put there by heroes from the trenches. It shows their humour, even in the darkest times.” 

For other posts about art therapy, see here.