Mental Health: Past and Present - Short Course
Starts:
Finishes:
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
Course Content:
Mental Health is a contested field, which has been shaped by social and political forces and rapid shifts in scientific and medical expertise and treatment, as well as contributions from experts by experience. The meanings and categories of mental ill health have also varied across time and place.
This intensive module will chart the history of debates and developments in the field of mental health and psychiatric/psychological practice from the birth of the asylum and the invention of psychotherapies, through de-institutionalization, and up to the present. It will foreground cutting-edge approaches to understanding mental health in cultural and political context from the humanities and social sciences, along with key ideas from Mad Studies, Lived Experience Research, and Transcultural Psychiatry.
The module will take an international approach, guiding students through the key texts on ‘Western’ psychiatry while engaging with the burgeoning literature on colonial and post-colonial contexts, and the rise of the Global Mental Health movement. It will also contextualise contemporary mental health policy, with both local and international case studies.
The in-person contact hours for the course will take place over five days from 19th May 2025. There will also be preparatory material and pre-recorded lectures for students to access in their own time in the preceding weeks. During the instenive daytime contact sessions, students will be able to participate in live seminars, and will have the opportunity visit museum exhibitions and view curated documents in London archives through tutor-led visits, and participate in roundtable discussions with key players in the field linked with Birkbeck’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Research on Mental Health. At the end of the module students will have a strong grasp of the key debates in the field, the history of psychiatry and psychology, and will have a command of how humanities, social sciences and lived experience research can contribute to our understanding of mental health.
Syllabus topics:
- The birth of the asylum and the rise of modern therapeutics
- Diagnostic categories across time and culture
- What causes mental ill-health? How theories have changed over time
- Patient voice, lived experience and mental health activism
- From colonial psychiatry to Global Mental Health
- Mental Health Policy - Government, NGOs and stakeholders
- Contemporary debates in Mental Health Research and Practice
Learning objectives
- To trace the development of ideas about mental ill health, its meanings, classification and treatment in its historical context, from the birth of the asylum up to the present.
- To foreground cutting edge humanities, social science and lived experience approaches to mental health including history, anthropology and sociology, Transcultural Psychiatry and Mad Studies.
- To understand the rise of Global Mental Health and the predecessors of the field in colonial and post-colonial contexts.
- To contextualise the contemporary field of mental health policy, and to understand key debates in the field today.
- To link the study of mental health to museums, archives and other resources in London through tutor-led visits and roundtable discussions with key players in the field linked with Birkbeck.
Why should I take this course?
This course is open to anyone with an interest in learning about mental health from a humanities and social sciences perspective. It does not have specific pre-requisites. It is recommended for practitioners and clinicians, policy and research professionals, museum and cultural heritage professionals, and people with lived experience or carers who want to learn more about how mental health has been made sense of, historically and in the contemporary world. It would also be relevant to students or researchers in the humanities and social sciences who wish to update their knowledge on current debates and scholarship.
Course timetable and cost
This is an intensive course, starting on Monday, 19th of May and finishing on Friday, 23rd of May. Each day, it will run from 10am to 5pm, with 1 hour breaks each day. The course will run in Birkbeck's Malet Street building. The full course cost is £1,155. Online preparatory reading, pre-recorded lectures, and curated online content will be available from the 1st of April for self-study.
We offer a 20% discount to those who are members of Birkbeck's alumni community. Please contact us if you are a member and wish to activate this discount.
Contact name:
Innovation Support Unit