Wikimedia editathon on the history of psychiatry

Are you interested in the history of mental health and psychiatry? Then come along to our free History of Psychiatry Beyond the Asylum event, featuring talks from top historians and an afternoon of editing Wikipedia to improve its coverage of the history of psychiatry and mental health.

This event, linked with the Bedlam: the asylum & beyond exhibition at Wellcome Collection, will take place in the Viewing Room of the Wellcome Library on Saturday 19 November, and will feature talks on recent research into topics such as the history of mental health and prisons, women in psychiatry, the sanity of sailors, and family relations.

In the afternoon, there’ll be training on how to edit Wikipedia, giving you a chance to help others around the world to learn more about the history of mental health and psychiatry by improving content online. There are lots of pages on institutions, groups and individuals (particularly women) that are missing or very brief. Fortunately, the Wellcome Library has thousands of pages of digitised material, information from archivists, and thousands of books and journals on the topic of mental health, so there’s lots of scope for making some exciting improvements!

More details about the event can be found on the project page for the Wikimedian-in-Residence at the Library, and if you’d like to sign up then please send me an email (and let me know if there are any Wikipedia pages in particular you’d be interested in editing or creating!).