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Past histories charting interactions between British healthcare and Aboriginal Australians have tended to be dominated by broad histological themes such as invasion and colonization. While such descriptions have been vital to modernization and truth telling in Australian historical discourse, this paper investigates the nineteenth century through the modern cultural lens of mental health. We reviewed primary documents, including colonial diaries, church sermons, newspaper articles, medical and burial records, letters, government documents, conference speeches and anthropological journals. Findings revealed six overlapping fields which applied British ideas about mental health to Aboriginal Australians during the nineteenth century. They included military invasion, religion, law, psychological systems, lunatic asylums, and anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite making a substantial contribution to the development of mental health services in colonial Australia, until now the story of Dr Patrick Hill's (1794–1852) life has been overlooked by historians. This paper reviews primary sources including clinical notes, patient lists, letters, government documents and newspaper articles which reveal that Dr Hill was a dedicated physician who played a vital role in the development of Australian mental healthcare. He was held in such esteem that by the time of his sudden death in 1852 he had been elevated to the most senior medical office in New South Wales. Dr Hill's career serves to exemplify how the local practice of individual colonial doctors helped build the reputation of medicine in the modern era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the unique collection of Scottish outsider art, labelled Art Extraordinary, as a window into the often neglected small spaces of asylum care in the early twentieth century. By drawing upon materials from the Art Extraordinary collection and its associated archives, this paper demonstrates the importance of incorporating small and everyday spaces of care -- such as gardens, paths, studios and boats -- into the broader historical narratives of psychiatric care in Scotland. Examples of experiential memorialization and counterpoints to asylum surveillance culture will be illuminated. The significance of using 'outsider' art collections as a valuable source in tracing geographical histories will be highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the First World War injured servicemen were constructed as a better class of patient than civilians, and their care was prioritized in social and political discourses. For the mentally disordered servicemen themselves, however, these distinctions were permeable and transient.This article will challenge the reality of the ‘privileged’ service patient in civil asylums in Scotland. By examining the impact of the war on asylum structures, economies and patient health, this study will explore exactly which patients were valued in these difficult years. In so doing, this paper will also reveal how the lives of institutionalized ex-servicemen and the civilian insane inside district asylums were not quite as distinct as political and social groups would have liked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until around 1979, ‘confused’ or mentally unwell people over 65 years of age tended to be labelled as having ‘senile dementia’. Senile dementia was usually regarded as a single, inevitably hopeless condition, despite gradually accumulating clinical and pathological evidence to the contrary. Specific psychiatric services for mental illness in older people began to emerge in the 1950s, but by 1969 there were fewer than 10 dedicated services nationally. During the 1970s, ‘old age psychiatrists’ established local services and campaigned nationally for them. By 1979, about 100 old age psychiatrists were leading multi-disciplinary teams in half the health districts in England. This paper explores the tortuous development of these new services, focusing on provision for people with dementia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article constitutes a widely researched account of mental patients and their perceptions in the early history of Israel, especially its second decade. It focuses on a single generation, which experienced the traumas of war in Europe, followed by insecurity in Israel's struggle for independence. The article claims that in the 1960s many suffered from depression, reflected in a record number of patients in mental hospitals and mentally sick people, mostly of European origin. This study describes Israeli society in the 1960s as disturbed, immersed in nightmarish dreams and close to madness; it also discusses the genetic and neurological vulnerabilities which induced the psychosis and the social response that converted it into a chronic illness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1863 the Colonial Office reviewed colonial hospitals and lunatic asylums in those parts of the British Empire it administered – probably the first and widest international comparative study up to that date. This article outlines the background, process and scope of the review of asylums, and considers its significance. The resulting ‘digest’ is an important source to explain how, why, when and by whom metropolitan ideas acquired official endorsement and spread throughout the British world. Using the review’s general findings and suggestions, a tool is provided for comparing inter-colonial achievements. With New Zealand as a case study, the article concludes that, relative to other influences, the digest played a limited and largely indirect part in shaping New Zealand’s mental health policy before 1876. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the diagnosis of general paralysis of the insane (GPI) at the Auckland Mental Hospital, New Zealand, between 1868 and 1899, and changes in the identified causes of this condition. It argues that despite long-standing evidence citing the role of syphilis, asylum doctors working in New Zealand were as reluctant as their English and Scottish colleagues to blame syphilis alone for GPI. It also argues that although syphilis became a more popular cause in the aetiology of GPI by the end of the nineteenth century, medical and non-medical sources continued to cite other causes for GPI. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Little is known of Joshua Harrison Stallard other than that he was a provincial medical practitioner who moved to London and campaigned for improvement in metropolitan workhouses. In the pamphlet reproduced here, Stallard draws attention to the build-up of lunatics in workhouses due to lack of asylum beds. He also argues for the increased use of home care for lunatics instead of continually expanding asylum provision, and points to the need for training of asylum doctors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contemporary accounts credit Dr Francis Willis (1718–1807) with facilitating the recovery of King George III from his major episode of acute mania in 1788–9. Subsequently Willis was summoned to Lisbon to advise on the mental health problems of Queen Maria I. This article reports the nature of the illnesses of Maria and her two similarly affected sisters, and uses the program OPCRIT to propose diagnoses of major depressive disorders. The high prevalence of consanguinity and insanity among the Portuguese monarchy and their antecedents probably contributed to their mental health problems. The successive contributions of the Willis family from Thomas Willis (1621–75) to his grand-nephew, Francis Willis (1792–1859), are reviewed; the popular image is somewhat inaccurate and does not highlight their part in the development of psychiatry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The concept of mental hygiene is historically intertwined with eugenics and what it meant both ideologically and for the care of the mentally ill. A closer investigation of the concept and of the historical context shows that different interpretations existed simultaneously. The aim of this essay is to highlight the literary and scientific works of a Swedish psychiatrist, Josef Lundahl, an advocate of the mental hygiene concept. A close reading of his texts is used to provide an example of how the concept of mental hygiene was understood by a psychiatrist and practitioner of mental hygiene. The practice of child-care and out-patient care that Lundahl founded in Visby is far from what we now associate with mental hygiene in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines two institutions which were established in Scotland specifically for the accommodation of mentally-impaired children: Baldovan Asylum near Dundee and the ‘Scottish National Institution for the Education of Imbecile Children’ in Larbert, Stirlingshire. It surveys the aims and agendas of the institutions in the spheres of residential childcare, mental health, and education and training. It compares the admission regimes of these institutions and considers whether they complemented one another in serving an unsatisfied demand for places, or whether they were in competition for admissions, staff and charitable support. The survey covers the period from the opening of both institutions to the implementation of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 which required the (re)certification of all children. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents a study which determines the social changes in public mental health that contributed to variations in the use of emergency compulsory admissions in Rotterdam, Netherlands from 1929-2005. Annual reports and administrative data gathered within the period indicate the impact of general and local factors. These local factors include the availability of alternative arrangements, the interpretation of the criteria for compulsory admissions and better collaboration of services.

The article presents the quantitative analysis of the concepts of order and normality underlying the psychiatric practice of two mental health institutions between 1870 and 1970 in Zurich, Switzerland. The analysis is based on a representative random sample of 1330 records of patients from two institutions in the Canton of Zurich. The analysis encompasses the types of psychiatric measures for various cases and the explanation of the fundamental reasons and principles behind them.

The article discusses information about the philosophy of psychiatry in the U.S. The history of the philosophies of psychiatry can be defined as the contextualized study of past theoretical views on the nature, understanding, and management of madness and related notions. The philosophy of psychiatry may expect or follow empirical research.

The article discusses the historical social construction of the most prevalent diagnosis of youth in the U.S. The country's psychiatry controls the definitions of mental health disorders and diagnosis through required practice utilization of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. A research is conducted through a social construction theoretical paradigm to identify diagnostic classification systems, nosology changes, and critical time periods.

The article discusses the author's experience of treating a schizophrenic patient over a period of 45-years. She reflected on the reason why American psychiatrists refused to use major tranquilizers as antipsychotic drugs as they believed it could cause symptom substitution. She emphasized the need for psychiatrists to conduct comprehensive interviews on their patient's experiences to be able to determine the cause of their condition.

The article discusses the views of psychoanalyst William Menninger on the future of American psychoanalysis. The author notes that in the aftermath of World War II, a struggle ensued over the direction of American psychoanalysis. Led by Menninger, who reluctantly assumed the presidency of the American Psychoanalytic Association in 1946, a cohort of American-born psychoanalysts sought to make their profession more responsive to other medical practitioners and the general public. These psychoanalysts tried to promote a medicalized, Americanized and popularized version of psychoanalysis that deliberately blurred the distinction between psychiatry and psychoanalysis.

In this article the author presents the findings of a research about history of Norwegian psychiatry covering about 250 years. This comment concentrates briefly on the early Norwegian pre-psychiatric period up to 1850 and the social reactions to mental deviance. His main focus is the development of institutions, which in itself offers a measurement of public interest and approach to madness. This development was similar to the general trend in the rest of Scandinavia, but it seems, at least so far, to differ quite substantially from the traditional and mainly amateur historiography that has been dominant. The author also suggests three phases in the development of institutions: the gaol era, the madhouse era, and the asylum era. The findings suggest that Norwegian history of madness is crowded with gaols and workhouses.

The article examines Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger's view of the doctor-patient relationship as a direct and trusting existential encounter in a 1935 clinical case of hysteria. In the 1935 article derived from his lecture, Binswanger highlighted the importance of an existential relationship between patient and doctor in a case of hysteria. Unlike psychoanalytic transference, an existential relationship was built on trust, and did not merely repeat the dynamics of a patient's previous relationships but was a novel encounter in its own right. An existential relationship also guaranteed the efficacy of a range of therapies including somatic intervention, psychoanalytic treatment, moral influence and the restrictive guidelines of an authoritative figure, according to Binswanger.

The article reports on the history of Norwegian psychiatry. Until the end of World War II, psychiatry in Norway was mainly influenced by the German tradition. The first institution built especially for the mentally ill in Norway was the Oslo Hospital's "dollhus" which opened in 1778. The history of psychiatry before 1850 is mainly the history of the poor. In 1935 the Norwegian Labour Party formed a government with a social reform programme. After World War II, Norway gradually changed from an agrarian and fishing nation to an urban industrial state. After World War II Norwegian psychiatry was basically a hospital psychiatry, strong influenced by German psychiatry with its emphasis on classification, heredity and somatic treatment.

This article focuses on nineteenth-century Ireland, in which state control was administered from Dublin. Research on the history of forensic psychiatry in any country uncovers rich sources of information on professional medical and legal knowledge, on structures of power and control in society, and on the lives of the individuals unfortunate enough to have committed a crime and be deemed insane. Prior to 1850, views on criminal lunacy were rarely expressed in official documents in Ireland except in the context of arguments for reforms in the law.

The article discusses the transformation of the old concept of apparition into the concept of hallucination. According to the author, apparitions have been argued as the result of the existence of the external spirits or forces. It has been assured that the debate on the ontology and meaning of the "phantasms of the living" cannot influence the medical concept of hallucination.