Closing The Asylum

The Mental Patient in Modern Society

Peter Barham, Peter Campbell

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English

Process Press Ltd
01 December 2020

Care of the mentally ill; Psychology; Mental health law; Mental health services; Psychiatry

Closing The Asylum: The Mental Patient in Modern Society. The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the mental health of almost everyone, but it has impacted most severely on disadvantaged groups such as people with severe mental health problems, throwing pre-existing inequalities into sharper and starker relief. Though they had mostly all been closed by the turn of the century, the passing of the old Victorian asylums is still a matter of enduring controversy.

In this acclaimed book, first published almost thirty years ago, Peter Barham examines the changing fortunes of mental patients in the era of the asylum and after. He demonstrates powerfully that the closure of mental hospitals cannot meet the real needs of people with severe mental health problems without a profound rethinking of the role, rights and status of the former mental patient in society.

In a prologue to this new edition, he highlights the ironies of a post-asylum present afflicted by welfare minimalism, widespread deprivation and impoverishment, and a dramatic increase in the use of coercion and constraint in the delivery of mental health care. Closing the Asylum sets the scene for understanding how the experience of being treated as second class citizens has come about, and the author's forceful warnings of the dangers in the current mental health scene are highly germane to any consideration of what must change in our society after Covid. Veteran mental health survivor and campaigner Peter Campbell also contributes a preface in which he examines the passing of the asylums, and their after-life, in the light of his own experience.

By: Peter Barham
Contributions by: Peter Campbell
Imprint: Process Press Ltd
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 327g
ISBN: 9781899209217
ISBN 10: 1899209212
Pages: 242
Publication Date: 01 December 2020
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Peter Barham has been engaging critically with the field of madness for more than fifty years. His work has straddled clinical & social research, historical inquiry, mental health activism and film making. His other books include: He has a Ph.D in abnormal psychology from Durham and in modern history from Cambridge. He is a chartered psychologist & a fellow of the British Psychological Society. Peter Campbell is a veteran mental health survivor, trainer and campaigner, and also a poet. He holds honorary doctorates from Anglia Ruskin University and from The Open University.