Four days after Japanese forces bombed Pearl Harbor, the Minneapolis Star Journal offered anxiety-prone readers the advice of a local psychiatrist: Buy more newspapers.

DOCTOR’S PRESCRIPTION

To Junk Those War Jitters – Keep Busy, Have Fun, Shop

Girding for the battle ahead. (mnhs.org)

Keep busy. Read. Shop. Attend movies, especially comedies and musicals, avoiding melodramas or depressing movies. And engage in sports.

This recipe for persons with “war jitters” or persons likely to develop such jitters was advanced today by Dr. Alexander G. Dumas, Minneapolis psychiatrist.

Anxious, nervous persons who have a tendency to overreact also would do well to read newspapers instead of remaining glued to their radios, Dr. Dumas said.

“Digested, authenticated articles by well-known correspondents will affect them less and give them a chance to think through the material contained in these articles clearly without much emotional reaction,” he said.

Dr. Dumas, who is attached to Veterans hospital, praised the reaction of war veterans he had interviewed.

“There is no hysterical reaction among these men. They have been under fire and know how to relax and take things calmly,” he asserted.

Most veterans, he said, would like to go back and fight again.

He called upon the comparatively well-adjusted citizens of Minneapolis to set the example and “offer an anchorage for the less fortunate,” warning that dissemination of defeatist rumors might force government control of channels of communication.

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