Madness at home : the psychiatrist, the patient, and the family in England, 1820-1860 / Akihito Suzuki.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Suzuki, Akihito, 1963-

Series:

Medicine and society ; 13.

Medicine and society ; 13

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mentally ill--Care--England--History--19th century.

Mentally ill.

Mentally ill--Home care--England--History--19th century.

Mentally ill--England--Family relationships--History--19th century.

Mental health laws--England--History--19th century.

Mental health laws.

Psychiatry--England--History--19th century.

Psychiatry.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (273 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Psychiatrist, the patient, and the family in England, 1820-1860

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The history of psychiatric institutions and the psychiatric profession is by now familiar: asylums multiplied in nineteenth-century England and psychiatry established itself as a medical specialty around the same time. We are, however, largely ignorant about madness at home in this key period: what were the family's attitudes toward its insane member, what were patient's lives like when they remained at home? Until now, most accounts have suggested that the family and community gradually abdicated responsibility for taking care of mentally ill members to the doctors who ran the asylums. However, this provocatively argued study, painting a fascinating picture of how families viewed and managed madness, suggests that the family actually played a critical role in caring for the insane and in the development of psychiatry itself. Akihito Suzuki's richly detailed social history includes several fascinating case histories, looks closely at little studied source material including press reports of formal legal declarations of insanity, or Commissions of Lunacy, and also provides an illuminating historical perspective on our own day and age, when the mentally ill are mainly treated in home and community.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Psychiatry in the Private and the Public Spheres

1. Commissions of Lunacy: Background, Sources, and Content

2. The Structure of Psychiatric Practice

3. The Problems of Liberty and Property

4. Managing Lunatics within the Domestic Sphere

5. Destabilizing the Domestic Psychiatric Regime

6. Public Authorities and the Ambiguities of the Lunatic at Home

Conclusion

Appendix: List of the Reports of Commissions of Lunacy in the London 'Times,' 1823-1861

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9786612358838

9781282358836

1282358839

9780520932210

0520932218

9781598759310

1598759310

OCLC:

475969715