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Mental Health Past and Present

Overview

  • Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
  • Convenor: Dr Sarah Marks
  • Assessment: a 1000-word source analysis (25%), 1000-word book review (25%) and 4000-word essay (50%)

Module description

Mental health is a contested field, which has been shaped by social and political forces and rapid shifts in scientific and medical expertise and treatment, as well as contributions from experts by experience. The meanings and categories of mental ill health have also varied across time and place.

This module will chart the history of debates and developments in the field of mental health and psychiatric/psychological practice from the birth of the asylum and the invention of psychotherapies, through de-institutionalisation, and up to the present. The module will take an international approach, guiding you through the key texts on ‘Western’ psychiatry while engaging with the burgeoning literature on colonial and post-colonial contexts, and the rise of the Movement for Global Mental Health. It will also contextualise contemporary mental health policy, with both local and international case studies.

By the end of the module, you will have a sound understanding of mental health in its cultural and political context, and the value of approaches from the humanities and social sciences including mad studies, lived experience research and transcultural psychiatry. 

Indicative syllabus

  • Concepts of mental illness before the asylum
  • The birth of the asylum
  • Diagnostic categories across time and culture
  • What causes mental ill health? How theories have changed over time
  • Treatments 1: from lobotomy to psychopharmaceuticals
  • Treatments 2: therapies from Freud to CBT
  • Patient voice, lived experience and mental health activism
  • From colonial psychiatry to global mental health
  • Mental health policy - government, NGOs and stakeholders
  • Contemporary debates in mental health research and practice

Learning objectives

By the end of this module, you will:

  • have a clear grasp of the development of ideas and practices in relation to mental health and how they have changed over time and across cultures
  • understand how ideas and policies relating to mental health are developed in historical, cultural, economic and political context
  • understand some of the key debates in contemporary mental health studies
  • understand how the humanities and social sciences can contribute to our understanding of mental health
  • understand the development of the service-user, survivor and lived experience movements and how these have shaped - and are shaping - knowledge, practice and policy.