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Background: This contribution responds to three articles (we refer to all three as 'editorials') concerning something called 'geopsychiatry'. Aims: To evaluate claims made in these editorials for 'geopsychiatry' as a new field of inquiry at the interface between geography and psychiatry. Method: Close critical reading of two editorials in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry – entitled 'Geographical determinants of mental health' and 'Political determinants of mental health' – and one in the International Review of Psychiatry – entitled 'What is geopsychiatry?' Results: While this geopsychiatry initiative is to be applauded, disquiet can be expressed about the almost complete neglect of a pre-existing domain of inquiry – 'mental health geography' or 'the geography of mental health' – that has long been researched by academic geographers and cognate scholars. Key trajectories in this field can be identified and related to the proposed foci for geopsychiatry. Conclusions: The hope is voiced that future developments in geopsychiatry will proceed in dialogue with the literature and practitioners of mental health geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses one of Scotland's most controversial experiments in penal reform – the Barlinnie Special Unit – to examine the enfolding nature of care and control in carceral space. Connecting with recent arguments relating to "caring architecture" and using the framework of historical carceral geographies, it showcases the spatial complexities of implementing caring practices alongside reforming tactics. Beginning with a discussion of the care and control nexus within institutional spaces and its historical legacy, it considers the use of small units within the Scottish Prison System. Using the Barlinnie Special Unit as a pivot, the paper opens up the complex spatial arrangements and spatial tactics of experimental prison reform. It first examines the spatial and architectural dimensions of the Special Unit. Second, the paper focuses on issues of routine and inhabitation and the emotional uncertainty this generated for prisoners. Overall, this paper seeks to argue the importance of examining experimental spatial practices in prison reform history to highlight the interwoven spatialities of care and control in every‐day institutional life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The final report in this series focuses on the emerging intersections between historical geography, archaeology and the law. Whilst staying attuned to the darkest of geographies emerging from the sub-field, this report turns its attention to the creative and critical ways in which the dead are being used to reveal past lives and worlds that have been destroyed and forgotten. Using soil and the archaeological imagination as a pivot, this report centres on the interweaving themes of fragile environments, resurfacing and legal worlds in order to suggest the emerging possibilities for a hopeful excavation of new historical geographies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second report in this series turns to focus on the trace in relation to life-writing and biography in historical geography and beyond. Through attention to tracing journeys, located moments and listening to the presence of ghosts (Ogborn, 2005), this report seeks to highlight the range of different ways in which historical geographers have explored lives, deaths, and their transient traces through varied biographical terrains. Continuing to draw attention in historical geography to the darkest of histories, this piece will pivot on moments of discovering the dead to showcase the nuanced ways in which historical geography is opening doors into uncharted lives and unspoken histories. [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]

This report uses the First World War as a way to open up current debates into issues of bodies, selves, battlefields, memory and death in historical geography and beyond. Sweeping through a range of scales, from the global nature of imperialist practices to the intimate spaces of the psyche, this report highlights the contributions that historical geographers are making to these studies and the creative approaches taken. The aim is to expose the need for historical geography to engage with the darkest corners of human experience, in relation to conflict, so as to learn from the past in present insecure times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role that historical geography plays in the writing of biographies. The zoologist and developer of British military camouflage Dr. Hugh Cott's biography is discussed. The role that archival research plays in historical geographers' ability to write biographies is also discussed. One of the authors discusses her efforts to write the geographical biography "Enticing Ghosts to Life: Exploring the Historical and Cultural Geographies of R.D. Laing," which is about the Scottish psychiatrist, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst Ronald David (R.D) Laing. An overview of the biographies on the pirate, explorer and author William Dampier is provided.

In conjunction with the recent critical assessments of the life and work of R.D. Laing, this paper seeks to demonstrate what is revealed when Laing's work on families and created spaces of mental health care are examined through a geographical lens. The paper begins with an exploration of Laing's time at the Tavistock Clinic in London during the 1960s, and of the co-authored text with Aaron Esterson entitled, Sanity, Madness and the Family (1964). The study then seeks to demonstrate the importance Laing and his colleague placed on the time-space situatedness of patients and their worlds. Finally, an account is provided of Laing's and Esterson's spatial thinking in relation to their creation of both real and imagined spaces of therapeutic care., (© The Author(s) 2014.)