Australian psychiatric care: a history of psychiatric institutions and community care in Australia c.1811-c.1990

This database is a public resource containing a vast amount of Australia-wide information about the history of psychiatric institutions, the legislation governing psychiatric care, medical treatments, mental health policy and the sources essential to the investigation of these topics. Excellent studies have been published in the past of some individual psychiatric institutions, of particular medical practitioners and of the policies pursued in various of the Australian colonies or states, but such works have in the main lacked a national context and perspective. A truly national history of mental health services is yet to be written. This project thus marks a major step in the direction of telling the story of psychiatric care throughout Australia from its beginnings.The database provides: • chronological information on psychiatric institutions established in Australia since about 1811. This includes the names and dates of such institutions, as well as their often confusing changes of name;• there is also information about the functions and populations of these hospitals, plus Google maps locating all identifiable institutions throughout the country;• there is a chronology of the relevant legislation governing mental health in each colony, state or territory;• and, finally, there is a list of the most important sources available in Australian state and federal archives and libraries.The purpose of this project is to put a large amount of information into the public domain and thus to encourage more research into past policies for dealing with mental health issues throughout Australia. Over the last thirty years a revolution has occurred in the care of the mentally ill and mentally disabled in Australia - as it has also occurred elsewhere. In a relatively short period of time most of the country's large residential institutions, many established in the nineteenth century, have been closed down. Whereas at first this process of de-institutionalisation was broadly welcomed, in recent years criticism of the policy has steadily mounted among public and professionals alike. A vigorous debate is currently underway as to the relative merits of institutional as opposed to community care. While medical practitioners, social scientists, politicians and journalists have contributed extensively to this debate, often resorting to history in order to bolster their arguments, historians themselves have had relatively little to say. Unlike Britain, most European countries, the United States, Canada and New Zealand, Australia lacks a national history of its mental health services, most studies to date adopting a local perspective. The lack of a national history of psychiatric care has undoubtedly handicapped historians in their attempts to engage in nation-wide debates and has sometimes led to ill-informed discussion among non-historians.This Australian Research Council-funded project aims to provide a much-needed, detailed and comprehensive research resource for those wishing to understand how policies dealing with mental health have developed throughout the country over a period of nearly two centuries. This resource has been created in the belief that policy making in such a vital area of national public health cannot be undertaken effectively without an informed understanding of both the successes and failures of the past.This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (No. DP0771163) awarded in 2007-11 to Professor Elizabeth Malcolm (University of Melbourne), Dr Dolly MacKinnon (University of Melbourne) now University of Queensland, and Dr John Waller (Michigan State University).

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.