scholarly journals Lives in the Asylum Record, 1864 to 1910: Utilising Large Data Collection for Histories of Psychiatry and Mental Health

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 358-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela McCarthy ◽  
Catharine Coleborne ◽  
Maree O’Connor ◽  
Elspeth Knewstubb
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Collaborative Research ◽  
Large Data ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
Health It ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
History Of ◽  
Institutional Confinement

This article examines the research implications and uses of data for a large project investigating institutional confinement in Australia and New Zealand. The cases of patients admitted between 1864 and 1910 at four separate institutions, three public and one private, provided more than 4000 patient records to a collaborative team of researchers. The utility and longevity of this data and the ways to continue to understand its significance and contents form the basis of this article’s interrogation of data collection and methodological issues surrounding the history of psychiatry and mental health. It examines the themes of ethics and access, record linkage, categories of data analysis, comparison and record keeping across colonial and imperial institutions, and constraints and opportunities in the data itself. The aim of this article is to continue an ongoing conversation among historians of mental health about the role and value of data collection for mental health and to signal the relevance of international multi-sited collaborative research in this field.

Non-governmental organizations and mental health

2018 ◽  
pp. 487-498
Author(s):  
Marguerite Regan ◽  
Jenny Edwards ◽  
Iris Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
Current Policy ◽  
Health It ◽  
International Networks ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Policy Frameworks ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk

This chapter examines to contribution of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to meeting the mental health needs of individuals, families, and communities. After providing an overview of the history of mental health NGOs, and the current policy frameworks within which they work, it then examines the scope of mental health NGOs, and maps the main international networks and within the UK context. It examines the contribution of NGOs, the key challenges they face working within mental health, and concludes with the steps NGOs can take when striving for parity for mental health. It includes examples of international mental health NGOs throughout.

Madness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfonso Troisi
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Disorder ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
Evolutionary Analysis ◽  
Behavioral Diversity ◽  
The Core ◽  
Biological Adaptation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Evolutionary View ◽  
Functional Capacities

Medicalization of human behavioral diversity is a recurring theme in the history of psychiatry, and the problem of defining what is a genuine mental disorder remains an unresolved question since the origins of clinical psychopathology. This chapter presents an evolutionary view of mental health, placing functional capacities and biological adaptation at the core of attempts to define mental disorder instead of other criteria of morbidity that are commonly used . This theoretical shift depends on the fact that the evolutionary concept of mental disorder is consequence oriented: what makes a condition pathological are its consequences, not its causes or correlates. The chapter then provides, an evolutionary analysis, which reveals that the degree of efficiency of functional capacities is dependent on features of the environment. Optimal functional capacities are sets of coevolved traits that are best suited to increasing adaptation in specific environments. The same trait can be highly adaptive in one environment and minimally adaptive in another.

scholarly journals History of psychiatry in Nepal

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Rakesh Singh ◽  
Anoop Krishna Gupta ◽  
Babita Singh ◽  
Pragyan Basnet ◽  
S. M. Yasir Arafat
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Mental Health Policy ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
Psychiatric Nurses ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
Political Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Mental Health ◽  
Psychiatric Beds

The history of psychiatry as a discipline in Nepal has been poorly studied. We have attempted to summarise historical landmarks to explore how it began and its evolution over time in relation to contemporary political events. Although Nepal has achieved several milestones, from establishing a psychiatric out-patient department with one psychiatrist in 1961 to having more than 500 psychiatric in-patient beds with 200 psychiatrists by 2020, the pace, commitment and dedication seem to be slower than necessary: the current national mental health policy dates back to 1996 and has not been updated since; there is no Mental Health Act; the number of psychiatric nurses and in-patient psychiatric beds has increased only slowly; and there is a dearth of professional supervision in rehabilitation centres. Thus, despite making significant progress, much more is required, at greater intensity and speed, and with wide collaboration and political commitment in order to improve the mental health of all Nepali citizens, including those living in rural areas and or in deprived conditions.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 309-314
Author(s):  
Martin Summers
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Health It ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Orthodox View

The conclusion provides a summation of the book’s main arguments and offers suggestions for further research in the history of African American mental health. It reasserts the two central theses. First, Saint Elizabeths’ psychiatrists’ construction and reaffirmation of the white psyche as the norm produced a great deal of ambiguity regarding the nature of black insanity. This contributed to the prioritizing of the white sufferer of mental illness and the marginalization of mentally ill blacks. Second, African American patients and their communities exercised agency in their interactions with Saint Elizabeths, both to shape the therapeutic experience and to assert their status as citizens. This latter argument suggests that the orthodox view that African Americans have generally had an indifferent or antagonistic relationship to psychiatry needs to be rethought, which will require further historical scholarship, particularly with respect to African American activism within the realm of mental health care.

Going in and Getting out of the Colonial Asylum: Families and Psychiatric Care in French Indochina

2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 725-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Edington
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Psychiatric Care ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
The Public ◽  
Colonial Society ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis paper explores the movements of asylum patients in and out of psychiatric care in French Indochina as the product of everyday interactions between psychiatrists, colonial authorities, and the public, especially patients' families. Throughout the interwar years, families and communities actively participated in psychiatric decision-making in ways that disrupt our notions of the colonial asylum as a closed setting that patients rarely left, run by experts who enjoyed broad, unquestioned authority. Vietnamese families, by debating individuals' suitability for social life, engaged with professional psychiatrists to find common ground for thinking about and discussing mental illness. At the same time, they pursued their own strategies in ways that significantly limited the power of experts. Debates revolved around the mental health of patients, but also around the capacity of families to assume their care upon release, and whether the asylum itself was the most appropriate site for treatment and rehabilitation. By considering how lay people and experts came together to negotiate the confinement and release of asylum patients, this paper offers a novel perspective on the development of psychiatric knowledge and power in colonial settings. I argue that by situating the history of psychiatry within the local dynamics of colonial rule as opposed to expert discourse, the asylum emerges here less as a blunt instrument for the social control and medicalization of colonial society than as a valuable historical site for reframing narratives of colonial repression and resistance.

A History of the Mind and Mental Health in Classical Greek Medical Thought

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 456-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Thumiger
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
History Of Psychiatry ◽  
History Of Psychology ◽  
Ancient Medicine ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

This book on ancient medicine offers a unique resource for historians of medicine, historians of psychology, and classicists – and also cultural historians and historians of art. The Hippocratic texts and other contemporary medical sources have often been overlooked when it comes to their approaches to psychology, which are considered more mechanical and less elaborated than contemporary poetic and philosophical representations, but also than later medical works, notably Galenic. This book aims to do justice to early medical accounts by illustrating their richness and sophistication, their links with contemporary cultural products, and the indebtedness of later medicine to their observations. The ancient sources are read not only as archaeological documents, but also in the light of methodological discussions that are fundamental in the history of psychiatry and the history of psychology.

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