A Basket Case is a light-hearted - though not completely affectionate - way of describing a person who can't communicate properly and is mentally unstable. At the end of the World War One, the Surgeon General of the US Army was quoted as saying that he "denies there is any foundation for the stories being circulated of the existence of 'basket cases' in our hospitals". This was a clear reference to those trench soldiers suffering shell shock and related mental illnesses. At this time basket weaving was a standard activity in both British and American mental hospitals and the phrase was known British Army slang during the war.