Title: Madness in America
First published: 1995
Description: In this book, Lynn Gamwell and Nancy Tomes explore the historical roots of Americans' understanding of madness today. Drawing on a rich array of sources, the authors interweave the perceptions of medical practitioners, the mentally ill and their families, and journalists, poets, novelists, and artists. As they trace successive ways of explaining madness and treating those judged insane, Gamwell and Tomes vividly depict the political and cultural dimensions of American attitudes toward mental illness.

Gamwell and Tomes observe telling differences in the ways in which patients of different genders, races, and classes have been diagnosed and treated. The authors demonstrate how definitions of madness figured in national debates over abolitionism, women's rights, and alternative medicine. Madness in America also considers how the boundaries between sanity and insanity have been repeatedly redrawn in such areas as sexual behavior and criminality.
Subjects: Mental illness, Public opinion, Social psychiatry, Psychiatry, History, Community psychiatry, Psychiatrie sociale, Maladies mentales, Histoire, Psychiatrie, 44.91 psychiatry, psychopathology, Mental Disorders, Opinion publique, Psychiatry, history
Places: United States
LC classification: RC443 .G35 1995