This lack of understanding or care for nurses who are experiencing trauma is not new. After both world wars, plenty of soldiers were treated for shell shock—that is, post-traumatic stress disorder. But nurses working in the war zones were not. Research about the mental-health impact of war has always been about the men, despite hundreds of women working as nurses, next to the soldiers. In their diaries and letters these nurses describe their time in no-man’s-land, suffering broken bones, amputations and gas attacks, as well as caring for soldiers with bits of their bodies blown off; the things
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