Unfortunate Folk, Essays on Mental Health Treatment 1863 - 1992

Unfortunate Folk, Essays on Mental Health Treatment 1863 - 1992, ed. Barbara Brookes and Jane Thomson (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2001)

A book of essays about the treatment of the mentally ill, researched and written by postgraduate students of the University of Otago's History Department. The first two sections chart how the 'unfortunate folk' deemed to be 'foreigners' in the world of reason have been treated in one province of New Zealand since the founding of the Dunedin Lunatic Asylum in 1863.

Asylums (later mental hospitals) held out the prospect of cure and a standard of care and surveillance often impossible in people's homes. Institutions were to come and go, with changing styles of treatment and management and the modern development of community care. The final section looks at wider New Zealand patterns, with the creation of a specialty within medicine directed specifically towards mental health treatment.

Contents

Acknowledgements 5
Abbreviations 6
Notes on Contributors 7
Introduction ~ Barbara Brookes 9

1 Dunedin Lunatic Asylum, 1863 - 1876 21
Jeremy Bloomfield (1979)

2 Truby King and Seacliff, 1889 - 1907 35
Cheryl Caldwell (1984)

3 Taming the Brain Storms 49
Alexandra Reed (1993)

4 'Criminal Lunacy' 1882 - 1912 66
Jane Adams (2000)

5 Ashburn Hall, 1882 - 1904 83
Alan Somerville (1996)

6 Seacliff and Ashburn Hall Compared, 1882 - 1911 104
Caroline Hubbard (1977)

7 Ashburn Hall, 1905 - 1947 115
Judith Clare Medlicott (1972)

8 The Otekaieke Special School for Boys, 1908 - 1950 123
Sandy Bardsley (1991)

9 Psychiatry and Seacliff, 1912 - 1948 137
Susan Fennell (1981)

10 'Unfortunate Folk': A Study of the Social Context of Committal to Seacliff 1928 - 1937 153
Judith Holloway (1991)

11 Cherry Farm, 1952 - 1992: Social and Economic Forces in the Evolution of Mental Health Care in Otago 168
Jeff Kavanagh (1996)

12 Scientific Pastors: The Professionalisation of Psychiatry in New Zealand 1877 - 1920 185
Matthew Philp (1996)

13 'Production not Reproduction': The Problem of Mental Defect in New Zealand 1920 - 1935 200
Stephen Robertson (1989)

14 Women Psychiatrists in New Zealand, 1900 - 1990: An Oral History 215
Paula Cody (1996)

15 A Separate World? The Social Position of the Mentally Ill, 1945 - 1955 235
Susannah Grant (1998)

Notes 255
Index 297