Petty Tyranny and Soulless Discipline?
Claire Hilton
Geisteswissenschaften, Kunst, Musik / Geschichte
Beschreibung
High expectations for a better world followed the First World War. Many changes took place aligned with ‘progress’, but in England the poorest benefited little from them. This was all too evident in the nation’s public mental hospitals. Patients were their raison d’ȇtre, yet their experiences show they sat at the foot of the country’s priorities.
Petty Tyranny and Soulless Discipline? places patients at its centre to explore their daily lives, including their admission, care, treatment, discharge and after-care, or death. These narratives, drawn from a range of primary sources, are contextualised in an historical analysis of how and why a mixture of stagnating and changing knowledge, attitudes and ideals affected their experiences. The Lunacy Act 1890 underpinned life in the mental hospitals by setting out their organisation, regulation and funding. There was influence on what happened to patients from a variety of professionals, campaigners for reform, central government, local authorities, trades unions and voluntary organisations, often with competing agendas. There was also new medical knowledge, from Britain and beyond. This book weaves these strands into a coherent whole, to reveal the complexity of mental health provision in the past and enable reflection that might inform debate today.
Praise for Petty Tyranny and Soulless Discipline?
'Dr Hilton's comparison of psychiatric care in the 1920s and the 2020s is, by turns, elegant, stunning, salutary and chilling. Throughout, she reminds us of the dangers of what Rob Behrens has dubbed "bunker-ism". This excellent book is the beginning of an antidote, if not cure, for this common affliction.'
Nicol Ferrier, Newcastle University
'A groundbreaking and sobering read, which has seismic implications for the field of mental health care in the future. It should be compulsory reading for clinicians and providers of mental health services.'
Jane Warner, Plymouth University
Kundenbewertungen
psychiatrists, malaria, Mental Treatment Act 1930, after-care, mental nursing, Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder, Lunacy Act 1890, mental hospitals, 1920s