Struggle Mad or Get Out: The University as Asylum

Urban History Review, 2008

As indicated in Chapter One, the lunatic asylum of the nineteenth century was not simply a collection of buildings. It was intended to be a curative institution supporting the treatment of the insane person, who would be returned to sanity and re-introduced into society. The idea of the lunatic asylum as a curative environment and as an appropriate place for the care of the insane is fundamentally linked to two emerging movements in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: moral treatment and non-restraint. Moral treatment focussed on the removal of the insane from their homes to an appropriate environment where, under the direct influence of the treating doctor 1 , the insane would be brought back to sanity. The non-restraint regime sought to replace chains and appalling living conditions with a new system of management that structured the lives of patients and used the attendant and treating doctor in such a way that restraints were no longer required (Hill 1838; Conolly 1856). These two treatment regimes required similar rooms and spaces and similar arrangements of the parts of the lunatic asylum to facilitate their operation. Moral treatment offered the hope of a cure in an appropriate environment away from the exciting causes of the home environment (Hill 1838: 6), while non-restraint, which also emphasised the appropriate environment, sought to make life within the asylum more bearable and humane. These two treatment regimes formed part of the background against which the concept of the 'ideal' lunatic asylum appeared.

inter-disciplinary.net

This paper seeks to examine the role of history in explaining madness and the problems associated with some historians' interpretations and representations of the asylum system. It seeks to address the following questions: firstly, have our current policies and thinking on mental health been influenced inadequately, incompletely and incorrectly by historical analysis, and secondly, what is the use of history to contemporary mental health care? The influence of 'historians' such as Michel Foucault and Andrew Scull on our understanding of nineteenth and early twentieth century asylum care for lunatics is interrogated. The paper draws upon the author's doctoral research on mental health care and treatment in Hampshire from 1845-1914 to provide an alternative perspective to that promulgated by post-modern or Marxist theorists. It argues that poor practice in historical research by those with significant bias has resulted in misinterpretation and misrepresentation of lunatic asylum care -painting a portrait of hegemonic abuse rather than beneficial relationships in a therapeutic environment. It does not deny that asylum care and provision deteriorated, but suggests that the period before the medical model dominated mental health treatment should not have been so vehemently maligned, and may, indeed, hold the key to recovery today. The paper also focuses upon the practice and power of historians in rewriting the past generally and concludes by evaluating whether historians of mental health practice or practitioner historians are better placed to contribute a more accurate representation of madness.

2018

Towards the middle of the nineteenth century in Canada, social movements for the mentally ill, of clerical, philanthropic and humanitarian, political and journalistic dimensions were very much apparent. The Moral Treatment philosophy of the Quakers in Great Britain, who lobbied for and were an advocacy force for the establishment of humanitarian institutions with therapeutic surroundings of a noncustodial and non-coercive nature, appeared in Canada. This movement had grown up in the wake of the Enlightenment and on a wave of corresponding new feelings of social responsibility in Canada. It was influenced primarily by the prevailing philosophy of the time in Great Britain and by example, the creation of asylums in the U.S.A. Even before Canada became a nation, a policy shift emerged characterized by a sense of responsibility towards the mentally ill. The provision of care, protection, and treatment of the mentally ill took the form of asylums. The 1830s and 1840s already had seen the beginnings of asylum construction in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick. Prior to the construction of these asylums, the mentally ill in Canada, if considered harmless, were often left to wander at will as beggars. They were stigmatized as public nuisances at best. At worst they were often detained and incarcerated in restrictive environments such as jails and poorhouses where they were subject to deficient diets and substandard shelter, and where no attempts at "rehabilitation" were made. The first purpose built asylums in English Canada were the New Brunswick Lunatic Asylum in 1847 and the Toronto Lunatic Asylum in 1850 later known as Queen Street and now the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. By 1900 the prospects for the care of the mentally disordered in Canada were especially bleak. Within a few decades an almost full circle had been turned. This began with an introduction of positive reforms sufficiently successful to be convincing of its merit; and then often within months new admissions poured in until overcrowding and underfunding became a stifling affront to any sincere attempt to apply the ideal of caring and treatment. The natural consequence was custodial care in the absence of any alternatives. The ambitious vogue of reforming conditions for the mentally disordered had quietly subsided. Many of the new asylums in Canada became so large that, for example, the Hospital St. Jean de Dieu in Montreal housed almost six thousand patients in the 1950s. 10

During the late 18th and early 19th century the mentally ill who were not considered dangerous or too much of a nuisance were left to wander at will in the forests, towns, and country side. County jails as well as locked attics provided by frightened relatives were also common collecting places for the mentally ill. Departments of health, welfare or corrections did not exist and were not anticipated in the early farming and pioneer environment. As industrialization proceeded and both the nuisance value of the mentally ill increased in town and country, ad hoc committees composed of politicians and occasional clergymen, doctors or judges were formed The penitentiaries and asylums came into being through this process. The social reform movement came about in the mid 19th century. In New Brunswick which has the distinction of having had the first provincial asylum, the 1836 Report of the Commissioners had as a central theme the moral treatment of the insane

Antiquity, 2020

Health and history, 2009

Deinstitutionalisation describes the process in which, throughout the western world, psychiatric hospitals discharged most of their patients and most often closed their doors. It coincided with an influential rethinking of the status of the mentally ill as citizens. At Wolston Park Hospital, Queensland's first and major psychiatric facility, opened in 1865, this was an extended process beginning in the 1930s that ended only in 2001. This paper considers how this happened, over what period of time, and with what kinds of impact on the institutional community. It makes use of oral histories collected among those who worked at the hospital as well as those who were its patients and clients.

Histoire sociale/Social history, 2011

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2010