Understanding the mental health tribes: A critical historical analysis of the changing functions of mental health practitioners
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Who this event is for
Location
The Green Room, Headington Hill Hall, Headington Campus, Headington Hill site
Details
Standard histories of the mental health
professions are often celebratory and internalist, placed within a framework dominated
by histories of the asylum, with the process of deinstitutionalisation - moving
from asylum to ‘community care’ - seen as a key determinant of changing
functions of mental health workers. This seminar presents an alternative analysis
of the major changes of function and patterns of professionalisation for these
workers, and the emergence of new groups of mental health workers, from c.1960
to the present day. It offers a framework for understanding these changes,
based on concepts of filter theory, care pathways, and patterns of mental
health care, that are derived from ideas of social psychiatry. It reviews the major
shifts in patterns of practice, no longer dominated by profession of origin, or
by NHS employment.
Discussants: Dr
Jonathan Leach (Open University) and Professor
John Stewart (LSE)
John
Hall is currently both Visiting Professor of Mental Health, and Senior
Research Associate at the Centre for Medical Humanities, at Oxford Brookes
University. His forthcoming book, The
Mental Health Tribes, will be published by Palgrave.
