Private madhouses
This podcast aims to show the part played by commercial enterprise in the care of the mentally disordered, and also how varied the responses to mental illness or impairment were… Read more »
Monthly Archives: October 2016
Domestic care and parish poor relief
The building of asylums did not begin in any numbers until the early nineteenth century – prior to that time, care of the mentally ill or handicapped was generally provided… Read more »
The pharmacological revolution
Drugs are central to the ways modern clinicians handle mental disorders, but medicines for specific conditions are a very recent innovation. The first major breakthroughs in anti-psychotic, anti-depressant, and mood-stabilising… Read more »
Psychiatry’s past and present
On World Mental Health Day, Rab Houston reflects on how the study of the past can help us to understand mental health issues today: Some say the past is best… Read more »
Surgery and early drug treatments
In the second quarter of the twentieth century, psychiatrists were eager to try therapies, which look barbaric in hindsight and which attracted criticism even in their heyday. Such treatments including… Read more »