{"id":25624,"date":"2022-12-15T11:00:12","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/?p=25624"},"modified":"2024-09-05T09:20:41","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T13:20:41","slug":"lawrence-kolb-mental-health-as-public-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov\/2022\/12\/15\/lawrence-kolb-mental-health-as-public-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawrence Kolb\u2014Mental Health as Public Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Susan L. Speaker ~<\/em><\/p>\n

The National Library of Medicine recently launched a new Profiles in Science<\/em> site featuring psychiatrist Lawrence Kolb<\/a> (1881\u20131972). This Profile<\/em> presents a curated selection of digitized manuscripts from the Lawrence Kolb Papers<\/a> together with a narrative \u201cStory<\/a>\u201d that provides historical context, a chronology of Kolb\u2019s life and career, and a link to further resources to learn even more.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Lawrence Kolb, ca. 1942
Profiles in Science<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Kolb was a career medical officer and administrator in the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) from 1909 to 1945. While he is best known for his pioneering work in drug addiction diagnosis and treatment, his long PHS career included an impressive range of other duties. Kolb served as a quarantine officer on the Delaware River and a medical inspector at the Ellis Island immigration station, where he helped develop tools and protocols for immigrant intelligence testing. And he organized and served as director for three new PHS hospitals (one for shell shocked WWI veterans, one for chronically ill federal prisoners, and one for drug addicts) before his final assignment as Assistant Surgeon General in charge of the PHS Division of Mental Hygiene. The Lawrence Kolb Profiles<\/em> site includes correspondence, reports, publications, and speeches that chronicle Kolb\u2019s many activities and accomplishments. At the same time, they provide a window to the experiences of Public Health Service officers during the first half of the twentieth century, which was an era of rapid growth and transformation in medicine, public health, and psychiatry, within the larger context of massive immigration and other social changes, two world wars, and the Great Depression.<\/p>\n

Kolb received his MD from the University of Maryland in 1908, and joined the PHS the following year. In his first duty station, he boarded and inspected ships, passengers, and cargo travelling up the Delaware River, quarantining any that carried contagious diseases. \u00a0As an immigration inspection officer at Ellis Island from 1913 to 1919, Kolb was part of a group that developed and evaluated intelligence tests (a new assessment method at the time) for screening prospective immigrants. A decade later, he would again work with intelligence testing while posted overseas in Dublin, Ireland. Kolb\u2019s papers show how this process was complicated not only by cultural and language differences, but by American attitudes and assumptions about foreigners, and about people with intellectual disabilities.<\/p>\n

\"Four<\/a>
Interview and Psychiatric Examination of an Immigrant at Ellis Island
Profiles in Science<\/em><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In his first administrative post, Kolb was in charge of Public Health Hospital #37 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, established to treat WWI veterans suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders, particularly \u201cshell shock.\u201d Shell shock or \u201cwar neurosis,\u201d (which would now be called a type of post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD) emerged as a new illness during the war. Its various manifestations posed diagnostic and therapeutic challenges for psychiatrists and other physicians trying to determine why it affected some soldiers and not others, and whether it was a truly disabling condition or just a form of malingering. The Kolb Papers include correspondence<\/a> regarding several patient complaints<\/a> that the medical staff didn\u2019t consider their PTSD legitimate, and neglected them.<\/p>\n