Chapter 7 Mansions in the Orchard architecture, asylum and community in twentieth-century mental health care

• Format: eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Manchester Manchester University Press 2019
• Series: Social Histories of Medicine
• Subjects: History of ideas; History of medicine; Social & cultural history; History of psychiatry; Mental health; Museology; Museums; Public engagement; Stigma; User involvement
• Online Access: Open Access: DOAB: description of the publication; Open Access: DOAB, download the publication

 This chapter explores the value and relevance of a combined academic and public engagement approach to the history of medicine. The authors consider a specific mental health project at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, in the context of a longer tradition of service user involvement in mental health research and museology. It is argued that the project's approach presented a unique opportunity for mental health education and the reduction of stigma. These elements of the project informed the historical focus, resulting in a more inclusive history than in many institutional histories of psychiatry, focusing on the importance of space, place and architecture in twentieth-century psychiatry. The chapter concludes that community engagement within a museum setting enriches the history of medicine as a discipline and vice versa.