The Crusade for Forgotten Souls: Reforming Minnesota's Mental Institutions, 19461954

(Paperback)

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The Crusade for Forgotten Soulsrecounts Minnesota's reform movement that broke the stigma surrounding mental illness, publicized the painful truth about the state's asylums, and resulted in the first legislative steps toward a modern mental health system. Susan Bartlett Foote tells the story of the early advocates for compassionate care of the mentally ill who made the crusade a success.

Reviews

"Using rich empirical detail, Susan Bartlett Footes integrated approach simultaneously reconstructs life in an asylum and a mental health reform campaign. Engla Scheys journala historians dream resourceallows patients to speak, processes the attendants experiences, and captures the culture of state institutions. Foote has managed to keep patients, medical workers, reformers, state policies, and the impact of changes visible throughout this story."Jennifer Gunn, University of Minnesota

"In a wondrous feat of research and storytelling, Susan Bartlett Foote has distilled personal accounts, public and institutional records, and newspaper coverage to dramatically detail Minnesotas mental health reform of the last century. Her narrative is harrowing and inspiringa tribute to the difficult work of countless people, many of them outraged ordinary folk, who challenged the horrors of a stubborn and intractable system."Jack El-Hai, author of The Nazi and the Psychiatrist and The Lobotomist

"The Crusade for Forgotten Souls recounts the story of courageous Minnesotans who fought the first battle in the ongoing fight for the rights of the mentally ill. Others have taken up the cause, like my father, Paul Wellstone, who made mental health reform the centerpiece of his years in the United States Senate. Susan Bartlett Footes compelling story provides an inspiration to current reformers to continue the crusade for what my father called a besieged minority."Dave Wellstone

"Susan Bartlett Footes exhaustively researched book gives compelling evidence that even by the standards of the time, Minnesotas system of segregated mental institutions was backward, barbaric and particularly resistant to social change."Star Tribune

"The historians dream scenarioserendipitously stumbling upon a cache of previously unexamined documents in ones own homeprompted Susan Bartlett Footes inquiry into a group of post-war reformers who envisioned nothing less than a complete overhaul of Minnesotas mental health system." Social History of Medicine Journal, Oxford Press

Author Bio

Susan Bartlett Foote is professor emerita in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota, where she was head of the Division of Health Policy and Management from 1999 to 2005. She is the author of Managing the Medical Arms Race: Business and Public Policy in the Medical Device Industry.