Mind, State and Society examines the reforms in psychiatry and mental health services in Britain during 1960–2010, when de-institutionalisation and community care coincided with the increasing dominance of ideologies of social liberalism, identity politics and neoliberal economics. Featuring contributions from leading academics, policymakers, mental health clinicians, service users and carers, it offers a rich and integrated picture of mental health, covering experiences from children to older people; employment to homelessness; women to LGBTQ+; refugees to black and minority ethnic groups; and faith communities and the military. It asks important questions such as: what happened to peoples' mental health? What was it like to receive mental health services? And how was it to work in or lead clinical care? Seeking answers to questions within the broader social-political context, this book considers the implications for modern society and future policy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Social Order/Mental Disorder represents a provocative and exciting exploration of social response to madness in England and the United States from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. Scull, who is well-known for his previous work in this area, examines a range of issues, including the changing social meanings of madness, the emergence and consolidation of the psychiatric profession, the often troubled relationship between psychiatry and the law, the linkages between sex and madness, and the constitution, character, and collapse of the asylum as our standard response to the problems posed by mental disorder. This book is emphatically not part of the venerable tradition of hagiography that has celebrated psychiatric history as a long struggle in which the steady application of rational-scientific principles has produced irregular but unmistakable evidence of progress toward humane treatments for the mentally ill. In fact, Scull contends that traditional mental hospitals, for much of their existence, resembled cemeteries for the still breathing, medical hubris having at times served to license dangerous, mutilating, even life-threatening experiments on the dead souls confined therein. He argues that only the sociologically blind would deny that psychiatrists are deeply involved in the definition and identification of what constitutes madness in our world – hence, claims that mental illness is a purely naturalistic category, somehow devoid of contamination by the social, are taken to be patently absurd. Scull points out, however, that the commitment to examine psychiatry and its ministrations with a critical eye by no means entails the romantic idea that the problems it deals with are purely the invention of the professional mind, or the Manichean notion that all psychiatric interventions are malevolent and ill-conceived. It is the task of unromantic criticism that is attempted in this book.

This open access edited collection contributes a new dimension to the study of mental health and psychiatry in the twentieth century. It takes the present literature beyond the ‘asylum and after’ paradigm to explore the multitude of spaces that have been permeated by concerns about mental well-being and illness. The chapters in this volume consciously attempt to break down institutional walls and consider mental health through the lenses of institutions, policy, nomenclature, art, lived experience, and popular culture. The book adopts an international scope covering the historical experiences of Britain, Ireland, and North America. In accordance with this broad approach, contributions to the volume span academic fields such as history, arts, literary studies, sociology, and psychology, mirroring the diversity of the subject matter. This book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com

The relationship between migration and mental health is controversial, contested, and pertinent. In a highly mobile world, where voluntary and enforced movements of population are increasing and likely to continue to grow, that relationship needs to be better understood, yet the terminology is often vague and the issues are wide-ranging. Getting to grips with them requires tools drawn from different disciplines and professions. Such a multidisciplinary approach is central to this book. Six historical studies are integrated with chapters by a theologian, geographer, anthropologist, social worker and psychiatrist to produce an evaluation that addresses key concepts and methodologies, and reflects practical involvement as well as academic scholarship. Ranging from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, the book explores the causes of mental breakdown among migrants; the psychological changes stemming from their struggles with challenging life circumstances; and changes in medical, political and public attitudes and responses in different eras and locations.

This book tells the story of one of medicine’s most (in)famous treatments: the neurosurgical operation commonly known as lobotomy. Invented by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz in 1935, lobotomy or psychosurgery became widely used in a number of countries, including Denmark, where the treatment had a major breakthrough. In fact, evidence suggests that more lobotomies were performed in Denmark than any other country. However, the reason behind this unofficial world record has not yet been fully understood. Lobotomy Nation traces the history of psychosurgery and its ties to other psychiatric treatments such as malaria fever therapy, Cardiazol shock and insulin coma therapy, but it also situates lobotomy within a broader context. The book argues that the rise and fall of lobotomy is not just a story about psychiatry, it is also about society, culture and interventions towards vulnerable groups in the 20th century.