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Where is the survivor archive?
Patients, ‘service users’, survivors? How do people living with mental illness see themselves? In the last of our series the Asylum and Beyond, Sarah Chaney looks for their voices in the historical record. In the March 1894 issue of the… Continue reading
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Using creativity to bridge the mental health divide
For the seventh in our series on the Asylum and Beyond, Victoria Tischler considers creativity as a way to share experiences of mental illness. I’ve been thinking about the line between those living with mental health problems and without. As… Continue reading
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William Sargant’s world of psychosurgery, brainwashing and exorcism
Mike Jay delves into the personal papers of one of the first ‘media psychiatrists’ of the 20th century, in the fourth in our blog series about the Asylum and Beyond. William Walters Sargant (1907-88) was one of the most colourful… Continue reading
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Art in the asylum
For the next in our series, the Asylum and Beyond, Julia Nurse explores our asylum archives to find some of the earliest examples of art therapy – and some fascinating artworks! As the first asylum to actively encourage and collect… Continue reading
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The language of mental health
For the next in our series about the Asylum and Beyond, Lalita Kaplish examines her reaction to reading a 19th century book about mental illness and disorders. George Shuttleworth was a psychiatrist and an asylum superintendent at the Royal Albert… Continue reading
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An hysterical diagnosis
What did it mean for a woman to be diagnosed with hysteria? In the second of our blog series on the ‘asylum and beyond‘, Charlotte Whittingham examines patient records from the asylum to find out. A 1916 casebook from St… Continue reading
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Notions of asylum and beyond
We’ve invited Mike Jay, curator of the exhibition ‘Bedlam: the asylum and beyond’, to take over the Library Blog as guest editor for a series of blog posts inspired by the notion of ‘asylum’ and our own digitised mental health… Continue reading
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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… Continue reading
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Purses and foldouts – unexpected challenges of digitisation
How do you digitise an entire library? I’ve been asking members of our Digital Production team to tell me about their part in the digitisation process. Name: Deborah Leem What is your job title? Digital Support Team Manager How many… Continue reading
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Holloway Sanatorium for the Insane
The travel writer Bill Bryson recorded that Virginia Water, the home to Holloway Sanatorium, had a charm about it because “it was full of wandering lunatics”. Bryson worked at the sanatorium in 1973 as a janitor on Tuke Ward. In… Continue reading