Did you know that the VA lobotomized thousands of US soldiers when they came home from war? These weren’t veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but from the World War II era, when mental health cures were much more primitive. Michael Phillips of the Wall Street Journal uncovered the story and discussed it with me on America Weekend.
He explained why the procedure was done even over some soldiers’ objections, or with the approval of the families. We discussed the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury affecting our modern veterans and how the VA dealt with their predecessors in the 1940s, what impact the lobotomies had on those veterans, and how the doctors viewed their work in retrospect.
Listen to our conversation here.