From September 1940 until the following May, in a period called “the Blitz,” German bombers dropped thousands of tons of explosives on the city of London.
Eight million Londoners moved in shelters and subway stations to avoid the destruction of these raids.
And from that time, there is data to suggests that mental health in London improved.
“Not only did these experiences fail to produce mass hysteria, they didn’t even trigger much individual psychosis. Before the war, projections for psychiatric breakdown in England ran as high as four million people, but as the Blitz progressed, psychiatric hospitals around the country saw admissions go down. Emergency services in London reported an average of only two cases of “bomb neuroses” a week. Psychiatrists watched in puzzlement as long-standing patients saw their symptoms subside during the period of intense air raids. Voluntary admissions to psychiatric wards noticeably declined, and even epileptics reported having fewer seizures. “Chronic neurotics of peacetime now drive ambulances,” one doctor remarked. Another ventured to suggest that some people actually did better during wartime.”
Tribe by Sebastian Junger (pages 47 and 48)
Wild, right?
So, certainly, the paragraph above does not describe everyone’s experience of violence. War is not a good time.
It does make me think, though, that meaningful, communal struggle actually does make us happier, in the long run, than lives oriented around individual comfort.
Instead of constantly rearranging our lives to make them more pleasant, let’s seek lives of responsibility and active love.
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