This open access book demonstrates that, while occupation has been used to treat the mentally disordered since the early nineteenth century, approaches to its use have varied across different countries and in different time periods. Comparing how occupation was used in French and English mental institutions between 1918 and 1939, one hundred years after the heyday of moral therapy, the book is an essential read for those researching the history of mental health and medicine more generally. It provides an overview of the legislation, management structures and financial conditions that affected mental institutions in France and England, and contributed to their differing responses to the new theories of occupational therapy emerging from the USA and Germany during the interwar period.

Disability Politics and Theory, a historical exploration of the concept of disability, covers the late nineteenth century to the present, introducing the main models of disability theory and politics: eugenics, medicalization, rehabilitation, charity, rights and social and disability justice. A.J. Withers examines when, how and why new categories of disability are created and describes how capitalism benefits from and enforces disabled people’s oppression. Critiquing the currently dominant social model of disability, this book offers an alternative. The radical framework Withers puts forward draws from schools of radical thought, particularly feminism and critical race theory, to emphasize the role of interlocking oppressions in the marginalization of disabled people and the importance of addressing disability both independently and in conjunction with other oppressions. Intertwining theoretical and historical analysis with personal experience, this book is a poignant portrayal of disabled people in Canada and the U.S. — and a call for social and economic justice. This revised and expanded edition includes a new chapter on the rehabilitation model, expands the discussion of eugenics, and adds the context of the growth of the disability justice movement, Black Lives Matter, calls for defunding the police, decolonial and Indigenous land protection struggles, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This book presents new perspectives on the multiplicity of voices in the histories of mental ill-health. In the thirty years since Roy Porter called on historians to lower their gaze so that they might better understand patient-doctor roles in the past, historians have sought to place the voices of previously silent, marginalised and disenfranchised individuals at the heart of their analyses. Today, the development of service-user groups and patient consultations have become an important feature of the debates and planning related to current approaches to prevention, care and treatment. This edited collection of interdisciplinary chapters offers new and innovative perspectives on mental health and illness in the past and covers a breadth of opinions, views, and interpretations from patients, practitioners, policy makers, family members and wider communities. Its chronology runs from the early modern period to the twenty-first century and includes international and transnational analyses from Europe, North America, Asia and Africa, drawing on a range of sources and methodologies including oral histories, material culture, and the built environment. Chapter 4 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographic index. 245 photographs and illustrations - mostly color. Free of charge in digital format on Google Books

The world's most comprehensive, well documented, and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive index, 128 photographs and illustrations - mostly color. Free of charge in digital format on Google Books.

The world's most comprehensive, well documented and well illustrated book on this subject. With extensive subject and geographical index. 338 photographs and illustrations, many old and rare, many recent in color. Free of charge in digital PDF format on Google Books.

"In recent years the field of modern history has been enriched by the exploration of two parallel histories. These are the social and cultural history of armed conflict, and the impact of military events on social and cultural history"--