Mental illness and American society, 1875-1940 / Gerald N. Grob.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grob, Gerald N., 1931-2015, author.

Contributor:

American Council of Learned Societies.

Series:

ACLS Humanities E-Book.

Princeton Legacy Library ; 5318

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Mental illness--Treatment--United States--History.

Mental illness.

Psychiatry--United States--History.

Psychiatry.

Mental health policy--United States--History.

Mental health policy.

Psychiatric hospital care--United States--History.

Psychiatric hospital care.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 428 p. )

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2019.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Gerald N. Grob's Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 has become a classic of American social history. Here the author continues his investigations by a study of the complex interrelationships of patients, psychiatrists, mental hospitals, and government between 1875 and World War II. Challenging the now prevalent notion that mental hospitals in this period functioned as jails, he finds that, despite their shortcomings, they provided care for people unable to survive by themselves. From a rich variety of previously unexploited sources, he shows how professional and political concerns, rather than patient needs, changed American attitudes toward mental hospitals from support to antipathy. Toward the end of the 1800's psychiatrists shifted their attention toward therapy and the mental hygiene movement and away from patient care. Concurrently, the patient population began to include more aged people and people with severe somatic disorders, whose condition precluded their caring for themselves. In probing these changes, this work clarifies a central issue of decent and humane health care. Gerald N. Grob is Professor of History at Rutgers University. Among his works are Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (Free Press), Edward Jarvis and the Medical World of Nineteenth-Century America (Tennessee), and The State and the Mentality III (North Carolina).Originally published in 1983.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Contents:

Front matter

CONTENTS

TABLES

PREFACE / Grob, Gerald N.

ABBREVIATIONS

PROLOGUE

ONE. The Mental Hospital

TWO. American Psychiatry: A Specialty Adrift

THREE. The Transformation of Psychiatry

FOUR. The Search for Public Policy

FIVE. The Quest for Psychiatric Authority

SIX. The Mental Hygiene Movement

SEVEN. The Invisible Patient

EIGHT. Dilemmas of Control: Accountability versus Autonomy

NINE. The Emergence of the Mental Health Professions

TEN. The Psychiatric Response

ELEVEN. Mental Hospitals and Psychiatry Between the Wars

EPILOGUE

NOTES

NOTE ON SOURCES

INDEX

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (pages [397]-414) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691655383

0691655383

9780691656809

0691656800

9780691196251

0691196257

OCLC:

1088436817