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Mental Health in Social and Historical Context

Module description

This module invites students to critically reflect on the study of mental health across different historical and cultural contexts, in order to better understand and engage with challenges around mental health today. Rather than assume the universality of mental health experiences and treatments, this module aims to defamiliarize mental health as profoundly shaped by the specificities of time and place, introducing students to cutting-edge research being undertaken across the humanities and social sciences. Through reading recent innovative published work and discussions in seminars, students will engage with a range of historical and ethnographic case studies and develop a strong understanding of how mental health has been linked, for instance, to questions of power and social justice, colonialism and decolonisation, and migration and the environment. The module as a whole will equip students to think comparatively about mental health across distinct contexts, and to reflect critically on the value of humanities and social sciences approaches in the face of contemporary mental health challenges.

Module aims - intentions of the module

This module is designed to equip students with a strong understanding of how scholars across the humanities and social sciences have approached the study of mental health. It aims to enable students to critically evaluate key themes, methodologies, and analytic approaches adopted by researchers in order to interpret understandings of and practices around mental health within specific historical and cultural contexts, and to reflect comparatively on what is universal, global, or timeless about mental health, on the one hand, and what is particular, local, or historically specific, on the other. As well as orienting students in relation to a wide range of approaches to mental health, the module also provides students with the opportunity to identify and study particular case studies or themes in more detail, and so develop a deep, critical understanding of different aspects of this field. The assessments for this module will give students the skills necessary to review recent scholarly books and articles in the field, and to produce critical writing assessing key themes, methods, or issues. Students will also be encouraged throughout to reflect on the relationship between histories and ethnographies of mental health and issues related to mental health today.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Understand and evaluate important themes, methodologies, and questions in the study of mental health across the humanities and social sciences today
• 2. Develop detailed knowledge of how understandings of and responses to mental health have varied across key case studies
• 3. Reflect critically on the translatability of particular approaches to mental health across different contexts, and on the value of humanities and social sciences approaches in understanding mental health today

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 4. Analyse and synthesise different types of historical and ethnographic evidence
• 5. Demonstrate a critical understanding of key concepts and debates in the study of mental health
• 6. Independently research and develop an original response to key questions about the study of mental health

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 7. Demonstrate capacity for independent critical research, study and thought, including developing the ability to construct and defend a sustained argument, both in written form and orally, using primary and secondary materials
• 8. Work individually and with a tutor and peers in an independent, constructive and responsive way
• 9. Apply key bibliographical skills to independent study

Syllabus plan

This will be a team-taught module and the syllabus will vary according to the composition of the module team and student choice. Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Introduction to the study of mental health in context
• ‘Madmen’ in the pre-modern Islamic world
• The rise of asylums in modern Europe
• Colonial psychiatry and decolonisation
• Deinstitutionalisation and reform in comparative perspective
• Indigenous perspectives on mental health
• Survivor activism and Mad movements
• Mental health, the environment, and human-animal relations
• Migration and mental health
• Commercialisation of mental health

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 50%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of referral will be capped at 50%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Michael Dols, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, ed. Diana Immish (Princeton University Press, 1992).
• Bren A. LeFrançois, Robert Menzies, and Geoffrey Reaume, eds Mad Matters: A Critical Reader in Canadian Mad Studies (CSPI, 2013).
• Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Penguin, 1991).
• Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times (Rider, 2020).
• Joseph Melling and Bill Forsythe, The Politics of Madness: The State, Insanity, and Society in England, 1815-1914 (Routledge, 2006).
• Chris Millard and Jennifer Wallis, eds Sources in the History of Psychiatry, from 1800 to the Present (Routledge, 2022).
• Paolo Milone, The Art of Binding People (Europa, 2023).
• Linda J. Morrison, Talking Back to Psychiatry: The Psychiatric Consumer/Survivor/Ex-Patient Movement (Routledge, 2009).
• Omnia El Shakry, The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2017).
• Akihito Suzuki, Madness at Home: The Psychiatrist, the Patient, and the Family in England, 1820-60 (University of California Press, 2006).

Key words search

Mental Health; Medical Humanities; History; Ethnographies; Politics; Psychiatry; Culture