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In sight, in mind: Mental health policy in the era of deinstitutionalisation
Katy Richmond
School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Bundoora Campus, VIC
Pauline Savy
School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Albury-Wodonga Campus, VIC
Abstract
For centuries 'deranged' and 'deviant' individuals were incarcerated in gaols and asylums, often for life. In these socially out-of-the-way places they were subjected to regular physical and mental abuse and the experimental, frequently lethal, psychiatric treatments of the time.
This paper summarises this prolonged dark period in the history of psychiatric treatment and identifies sociological analyses and arguments concerning the confinement of the mentally ill over the decades leading up to the closure of large mental hospitals. It goes on to examine deinstitutionalization as a contemporary response to mental illness and one that to date has been largely neglected by Australian sociologists.
The paper concludes by highlighting areas for research that would fill this gap.
Keywords
mental health policy, stand alone psychiatric hospitals, deinstitutionalisation
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