Join us online or in person for our first seminar for 2025 – with Dr Effie Karageorgos.

Locating the ‘moral genealogy’ of war trauma in the Australian Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide

Worldwide developments in the conceptualisation of trauma over the twentieth century have largely guided clinical practice in Australia. However, domestic political and military imperatives have ensured that understandings of war-related trauma also follow what Fassin and Rechtman (2009) label a ‘moral genealogy’. In ensuring that the process of diagnosis adheres to gendered constructions of the Australian, predominantly male, citizen, medical personnel have assessed and categorised trauma both clinically and according to the perceived ‘status’ or ‘social usefulness’ of victims. Military-medical authorities thus minimised the link between combat and trauma among archetypal Australian soldiers, instead pointing to personal attributes or family histories in determining the aetiology of traumatic symptoms. Ideas about heredity and degeneracy that dominated the management of military mental health were supposedly challenged by the inclusion of post-traumatic stress disorder in the 1980 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). This new categorisation moved away from victims’ personal histories and revived 19th century conceptions of the violent event and traumatic memory. Despite this shift, the findings of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide (2021-2024) suggests that the ‘moral genealogy’ of war trauma still guides everyday practice. This paper explores these shifts and continuities using political and military archives alongside historical and social perspectives on mental health.

11am, 5th March 2025.

Burwood: C2.05.01
Waurn Ponds: IC1.108
Zoom: Click here

Dr Effie Karageorgos is a historian whose work focuses on conflict, violence, protest, gender and psychiatry. She is Deputy Co-Director of the UON Centre for Society, Health and Care Research, co-editor of Health and History journal and co-investigator on the ARC project ‘Life outside institutions: histories of mental health aftercare 1900 – 1960’ led by Catharine Coleborne. With Natalie Hendry (University of Melbourne), she coordinates the Social Production of Mental Health seminar series, which has formed the basis of their upcoming edited book Critical Mental Health in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Social and Historical Perspectives (Palgrave, 2025).