Author Archives: Morag Allan Campbell

Face to Face: Stories from the Asylum is another strand in our Promoting Mental Health through the Lessons of History Project. Like the podcast series, the exhibition aims to engage… Read more »

Bipolar disorder is a complex psychiatric disorder of mood and behaviour that has been recognised for thousands of years. It probably affects about 1 in 50 individuals worldwide and is… Read more »

This podcast will help listeners to understand better the finer details pertinent to the topic of substance misuse disorder and dependence. Listeners will be taken through some of the relevant… Read more »

We’re delighted to announce that the next set of History of Psychiatry podcasts begins next Tuesday, March 13.  Series 3, entitled  ‘Understanding Mental Health: conditions, caring, and contexts’, is in a… Read more »

We are now acutely aware of the effect which viewing or participating in traumatic events can have on people. This last ‘document’ (actually a set of film clips) is about… Read more »

As Series 2 draws to a close, Rab shares his thoughts how the podcasts have been used as a teaching resource in Malawi, and looks ahead to a new mini-series… Read more »

We encountered a coroner’s inquest a few weeks back, presiding over the tragic suicide of an anonymous man. An inquest could deliver a verdict on the cause of death and,… Read more »

Most people with mental disorders are more of a liability to themselves than to others. The same cannot be said of this podcast and the next one, where the threat… Read more »

This series is entitled ‘the voice of the mad’, but sometimes mentally disordered people needed advocates to speak up for them. Normally that would mean a family member or someone… Read more »

As I showed last week, Herman Charles Merivale’s time at Ticehurst was a bit like being in a nice hotel, though he did not like the other ‘guests’. Someone who… Read more »

Last week’s extract and podcast allowed us to see what others thought of the lawyer Herman Charles Merivale, when he was committed to a private asylum. The document from which… Read more »

The most abundant sources for understanding the history of psychiatry are medical case notes, kept by asylum staff. In addition, petitions for admission gave accounts of behaviour that precipitated the… Read more »

Last week I looked at some regulations from Cardiff District Asylum at the start of the twentieth century. One of their main functions was to restrict communication between patients and… Read more »

In this podcast and the next four, we’re going to look at what patients made of entering and being in what we call mental hospitals and what were known until… Read more »

Eighteenth and nineteenth century English coroners’ inquests investigated roughly one death in every twenty. Their main task was to discover if someone else might have been involved or if a… Read more »

These nine examples of letters, diaries, and notes build up to what I think is a compelling picture of the despair and powerlessness felt by suicides. Some were left by… Read more »

This is the first of three podcasts that give different accounts of suicide. We first came across William Cowper a few weeks back, having an anxiety attack that left him… Read more »

This week’s podcast explores the case of Hugh Blair, one of  the clearest and earliest cases of autism for modern psychologists. In this blog post, Rab reflects on the launch… Read more »

Last week’s extract was a series of diary entries showing how a clergyman sought to help a young woman with learning disabilities. Hearing the voice of the intellectually impaired can… Read more »

People with learning disabilities were often slow to acquire the ability to read and write – which were not normal skills for many people until the 19th century. We know… Read more »