From mental patient to service user: deinstitutionalisation and the emergence of the Mental Health Service User Movement in Scotland, 1971-2006

Gallagher, Mark (2017) From mental patient to service user: deinstitutionalisation and the emergence of the Mental Health Service User Movement in Scotland, 1971-2006. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Until recently research on the history of psychiatry was largely focused on the institutions where this controversial branch of medicine emerged, on its practitioners, treatments, theories and clinical practices, and the shifting social, institutional and legal contexts in which it has developed. Two pioneering figures in the histories of psychiatry and medicine, Michel Foucault and Roy Porter, opened the historiographical field up to much broader perspectives, expanding the range of sources and interpretations to encompass a wide-lens focus on matters such as the relationships between histories of madness and rationality, ‘the patient’s view’ and ‘anti-authority struggles’ by psychiatric patients. The study undertaken here seeks to develop aspects of the historiographical approaches advanced by Foucault and Porter by investigating how psychiatric patients engaged in collective action and campaigned for reform to mental health services in late twentieth-century Scotland. Through an excavation, description and analysis of untapped archival and oral history sources, I chart the spaces of emergence and trace the intersecting lines of descent of the ‘Scottish user movement’ in the era of deinstitutionalisation. By examining the records of patient groups and oral history interviews with activists, I reveal how this small but significant social movement was formed through the interplay between top-down social and governmental practices and bottom-up resistance and action by patients. The study makes visible the characters, voices, settings, events and actions, which made up the changing discursive and social practices of patients groups in Scotland over the last half-century.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: History from below, social history, histroy of medicine, mental health, psychiatry, service user movement, Scotland.
• Subjects: H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform; H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races; H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
• Colleges/Schools: College of Social Sciences > School of Social and Political Sciences > Economic and Social History
• Supervisor's Name: Nicolson, Professor Malcolm
• Date of Award: 2017
• Depositing User: Mark Gallagher
• Unique ID: glathesis:2017-8078
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 07 Apr 2017 15:13
• Last Modified: 03 May 2017 15:02
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/8078