Care and Treatment of the Mentally Ill in North Wales 1800-2000

(Paperback)

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Care and Treatment of the Mentally Ill in North Wales is a ground-breaking study of the history of insanity in north Wales over a period of two centuries. It follows the rise and fall of a 'total institution', the predominantly Welsh-language North Wales Hospital in Denbigh, from its origins as the North Wales Lunatic Asylum in 1848 to its closure in 1995. Pamela Michael makes extensive use of patient case notes in order to discuss life in an asylum, to look at changing diagnostic and treatment patterns, and to explore the ways in which ordinary people understood and experienced mental illness. Through an examination of the ways in which disruptive behaviour has been contained, she also considers the social and cultural meanings of mental illness in Wales over the past two hundred years. Care and Treatment is the first detailed history of an asylum in Wales, as well as being a important contribution to the sociology of mental illness. In its analysis of the interaction between events inside the asylum and changes in Welsh society beyond its walls, it offers a significant new perspective on the cultural history of Wales.

Reviews

'...This scholarly and sensitive history of the Denbigh mental hospital in north Wales makes a valuable contribution to the history of psychiatry in its British context.' (Medical History) '...Michael has produced a very well documented and non-doctrinaire account of the Denbigh Hospital and the larger society within which it was situated. In so doing, she has made a very useful contribution to the new 'micro-history' of the nineteenth and twentieth century asylum and psychiatric institution.' Social History Society Bulletin 'Pamela Michael has produced a carefully and clearly written portrait of care and treatment for the mentally ill which is an important contribution, not only to the history of asylums and mental health, but to the growing literature on 'welfare peripheries' and the history of health and social care in Wales.' Contemporary British History 'You don't have to be Welsh, or have any knowledge of the history of the treatment of mental illness, to appreciate this otherwise fascinating book...' Wellcome History

Author Bio

Pamela Michael is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Wales, Bangor. She also worked as a research fellow on the Wellcome-funded project on the history of insanity in North Wales under the supervision of Professor R. Merfyn Jones of the Department of History at Bangor. She has published several articles in learned journals and edited collections.