Chapter 7 Mansions in the Orchard
Subtitle: architecture, asylum and community in twentieth-century mental health care
Contributors: Walke, Jennifer
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Manchester
Language: eng
Number of pages: 24
ISBN-13: 9781526142474
Subjects: Social & cultural history; History of ideas; History of medicine
Description: This chapter explores the value and relevance of a combined academic and public engagement approach to the history of medicine. The authors consider a specific mental health project at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, in the context of a longer tradition of service user involvement in mental health research and museology. It is argued that the project’s approach presented a unique opportunity for mental health education and the reduction of stigma. These elements of the project informed the historical focus, resulting in a more inclusive history than in many institutional histories of psychiatry, focusing on the importance of space, place and architecture in twentieth-century psychiatry. The chapter concludes that community engagement within a museum setting enriches the history of medicine as a discipline and vice versa.
Notes: Open Access Unrestricted online access

Wellcome Trust

Creative Commons by-nc-nd/4.0/

English