The Asylum System

INTRO (150)
The following will be a critical discussion of the impact the rise and fall of the asylum system has had on contemporary understandings of mental health issues, incorporating the concept of post-structuralism and its underpinning in this context.

1600: How have historical institutions, such as the asylum, shaped contemporary medicines understanding of ‘mental health? Critically discuss this question using the theoretical frameworks
Classical references to the modern-day concept of mental health have been found within the work of Plato, Hippocrates and Galen (Harris, 2013) and in the fourth and fifth centuries, astrologers began referring to neurological and psychiatric disorders using the term lunacy

The theory developed from structuralism and came to prominence in the 1960s (Bensmaia, 2005). Although the rise and fall of the asylum system is a progressive biomedical story, it can also be told with a post-structuralist narrative of social control. For example, post Structuralist 's such as Michel Foucault believe madness is a social construct. Therefore, he believed that the history of mental health would be a question of freedom, control and power rather than of disease and its treatment if it had been narrated correctly (Foucault,

Despite the fact the number of asylums rose, the act wasn 't significant due to deficiencies in the legislation (REF). It wasn 't until the Lunacy Act (1845) that the asylum system began to snowball. The act meant countries were legally required to provide asylums for their population, and the lunatics became patients, rather than prisoners. It also required at least one qualified physician per asylum (Unsworth, 1993: 482). England 's population was continuing to rise, STATISTICS AND REF. Bricks-and-mortar solutions were the Victorian answer to social problems, and the asylums became vastly overcrowded. This led to further expansion of the system with another sixty asylums opening to hold the growing population. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, England and France had only a few hundred thousand in asylums, but by the end of the century, this rose to hundreds of thousands (Shorter,