- Title
- An end to Bedlam? The enduring subject of madness in social and cultural history
- Creator
- Coleborne, Catherine
- Relation
- Social History Vol. 42, Issue 3, p. 420-429
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2017.1327670
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2017
- Description
- In the queue for the highly successful Wellcome Collection exhibition in London – ‘Bedlam: the asylum and beyond’ – during its first public days in September 2016, I pondered the significance of the lengthy line snaking through the foyer, and the roped-off limit on new entrants. As I waited I anticipated visitors’ reactions. Was this the new face of public knowledge about mental health, and interest in its history? Have we always been so interested, or is this a shift in perceptions of its social histories and a marker of present concern about ‘madness'. Later, in an airport, I ran into a historian I know, also travelling home to the other side of the world, who wondered what I thought of the exhibition. She remarked that she was slightly dismayed by the presence of contemporary art at the designated start of the exhibition. It was, she thought, a history exhibition. Yet that’s the point: madness is everywhere and ‘in’ everything, and can be understood through many media – as well as historically. Although history might be one of our best ways into understanding current mental health debates, arguably, histories of madness are so plentiful now that we need new ways of understanding it in everyday accessible language
- Subject
- social and cultural history; madness; Bedlam; London; mental health
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1351529
- Identifier
- uon:30727
- Identifier
- ISSN:1470-1200
- Language
- eng
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