1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910816899903321

Autore

Dyck Erika

Titolo

Managing madness : Weyburn Mental Hospital and the transformation of psychiatric care in Canada / / Erika Dyck [and seven others]

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Winnipeg, Manitoba : , : University of Manitoba Press, , 2017

©2017

ISBN

0-88755-537-3

0-88755-535-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (322 pages) : illustrations, maps, portraits

Disciplina

362.2

Soggetti

Mental health services - Saskatchewan - History

Mentally ill - Institutional care - Saskatchewan - History

Psychiatric hospitals - Saskatchewan - History

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Who has seen the asylum? -- Optimism and celebration -- Experiencing the asylum -- False starts -- Socializing mental health care -- Pills, politics, and experiments of all kinds -- Dissolving the walls -- Hospital diasporas -- Consumption and survival -- Legacies.

Sommario/riassunto

"The Saskatchewan Mental Hospital at Weyburn has played a significant role in the history of psychiatric services, mental health research, and community care in Canada. Its history provides a window to the changing nature of mental health services over the twentieth century. Built in 1921, the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital was billed as the last asylum in North America and the largest facility of its kind in the British Commonwealth. A decade later, the Canadian Committee for Mental Hygiene cited it as one of the worst institutions in the country, largely due to extreme overcrowding. In the 1950s, the Saskatchewan Mental Hospital again attracted international attention for engaging in controversial therapeutic interventions, including treatments using LSD. In the 1960s, sweeping health care reforms took hold in the province and mental health institutions underwent dramatic changes as they began moving patients into communities. As the patient and staff population shrank, the once palatial building fell into disrepair, the



asylum's expansive farmland fell out of cultivation, and mental health services folded into a complicated web of social and correctional services. Managing Madness examines the Weyburn Mental Hospital, the people it housed, struggled to understand, help, or even tried to change, and the ever-shifting understanding of mental health."--