Mental Health Episodes

Sept. 30, 2022

Ep.8 - Past & Present - Psychiatry

Delves into the history of psychiatry and modern-day psychiatry practice.
April 15, 2022

Ep.81 - Thomas Dixon - Thomas Brown - Inventor Of The Emotions

Dr Thomas Brown - considered to have been the “inventor of the emotions”.
March 18, 2022

Ep.79 - Maureen Park - Patient art at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital

Dr Maureen Park uses the archive of the Royal Edinburgh Hospital to examine the reasons why, and the extent to which, drawing was promoted as a ‘therapeutic’ activity in the hospital.
April 30, 2021

Ep.56 - Allan Beveridge - Sir Alexander Morison and The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases

Dr Allan Beveridge discusses the 19th century Scottish pioneer of psychiatric medicine Sir Alexander Morison and the collection of illustrations of asylum patients which he commissioned.
March 5, 2021

Ep.52 - John Crichton - Forensic Psychiatry From Plato to the Modern ‘Insanity’ Defence

John Crichton considers the origins of Scotland’s ‘insanity’ law and what ancient themes are still relevant today.
Jan. 22, 2021

Ep.49 - Sarah Wise - Gaslight Stories - Women In White, Eccentric Heirs, Inconvenient People

Sarah Wise examines a number of disputed lunacy cases, ranging from the 1820s to the 1890s - including the unsavoury incident that Sir Alexander Morison himself became embroiled in.
Oct. 2, 2020

Ep.41 - Lisa Smith - Fragments from an Eighteenth-Century Family Scandal

Lisa Smith discusses the tumultuous relationships of the Newdigates and attempts to piece together a shadowy family scandal from the perspectives of father, daughter and son.
July 24, 2020

Ep.36 - Chris Philo - The Wild and Tranquil Geographies of Animals and Madness

Prof. Chris Philo explores the ‘madness’ of both human and animals.
June 10, 2020

Ep.27 - James Kennaway - The Piano Plague: The Medical Campaign Against Female Musical Education

For much of the 19th-C there was serious medical discussion about the dangers of excessive music in girls’ education. This examines theories relating to this medical panic and consider motivations behind it.
June 10, 2020

Ep.21 - Mark Jackson - The Age of Stress: Myth or Reality?

Traces the history of stress in the twentieth century, exploring scientific theories, clinical formulations and personal experiences of stress and stress-related diseases.
June 10, 2020

Ep.15 - James Kennaway - Fashionable Stomach Complaints and the Mind in Georgian Britain

Examines the development of thinking on the mind-stomach nexus, and how such thinking was incorporated into critiques of modern Britain.
June 10, 2020

Ep.14 - Catherine Cox - Irish Migration, Institutionalisation and Mental Illness in 19thC England

Explores the migratory patterns of Irish patients into and through the Lancashire asylum system in the later 19th century.
June 10, 2020

Ep.13 - Edgar Jones - How Ideas about Psychiatric Trauma Evolved in the Two World Wars

Explores how healthcare professionals in the UK interpreted psychosomatic disorders such as shell shock, battle exhaustion and traumatic neurasthenia, in the context of psychiatric research and the new forms of warfare.
June 10, 2020

Ep.10 - Gayle Davis - The Female Malady: The Relationship Between Madness, Psychiatry And Gender

Explores the relationship between madness, psychiatry and gender over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using the Royal Edinburgh Asylum as a case study.
June 10, 2020

Ep.11 - Allan Beveridge - Voices Of The Mad: Patients’ Letters From The Royal Edinburgh Asylum

Drawing on over a thousand patient letters, this examines the lives of inmates at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum when the renowned psychiatrist Thomas Clouston was Superintendent.