MENTAL health issues have been severely stigmatised and misunderstood throughout history. One hundred years ago, during the First World War, 306 men and boys were shot at dawn for ‘cowardice’ while in fact suffering from mental illness.

Private Harry Farr was one of those men. He was shelled repeatedly as he fought in the trenches, going over the top many times. Eventually he collapsed with the shakes caused by severe damage to his ear drums, but after a brief stay in hospital he was sent back to the front line to fight in the Battle of the Somme.

In July 1915 he repeatedly asked for medical attention for his condition but was told to return to the front line. After struggling on for months he told a medic “I just can’t go on”. After deserting his post and a 20-minute court martial, he was executed by firing squad on 18th October 1916.

His wife Gertrude later recalled that the post office told her they “Don’t give pensions to the widows of cowards’. The stigma ran very deep across the country, and she was left destitute with two young children to feed and look after. Hundreds more suffered the same fate.

The Army simply did not at the time recognise that Harry was suffering from shell shock, a mental illness we now call posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It can cause severe symptoms from insomnia to depression, severe anxiety, and difficulty thinking.

90 years after being called a coward and shot, Harry Farr and the other men and boys executed for desertion during the First World War were pardoned by the government. After nearly a century, the state had finally recognised to remove the stigma that mental illness had brought on these brave men and boys who fought hard for our country until they could no more.

The lesson we can learn from this story is how seriously we should take mental health issues. A century ago it was all too easy for military officers to think of those ill with shell shock as cowards.

Equally today, it is easy to fall into the trap of stigmatising those with mental illness. A person with depression is not lazy and unwilling to help themselves. They have a medical condition which needs treatment, understanding and support as much as any physical condition.

Chris Evans, Member of Parliament for Islwyn