Mental Health Episodes
Ep.8 - Past & Present - Psychiatry
Sept. 30, 2022
Delves into the history of psychiatry and modern-day psychiatry practice.
Ep.81 - Thomas Dixon - Thomas Brown - Inventor Of The Emotions
April 15, 2022
Dr Thomas Brown - considered to have been the “inventor of the emotions”.
Ep.79 - Maureen Park - Patient art at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital
March 18, 2022
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.
Ep.56 - Allan Beveridge - Sir Alexander Morison and The Physiognomy of Mental Diseases
April 30, 2021
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.
Ep.52 - John Crichton - Forensic Psychiatry From Plato to the Modern ‘Insanity’ Defence
March 5, 2021
John Crichton considers the origins of Scotland’s ‘insanity’ law and what ancient themes are still relevant today.
Ep.49 - Sarah Wise - Gaslight Stories - Women In White, Eccentric Heirs, Inconvenient People
Jan. 22, 2021
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.
Ep.41 - Lisa Smith - Fragments from an Eighteenth-Century Family Scandal
Oct. 2, 2020
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.
Ep.36 - Chris Philo - The Wild and Tranquil Geographies of Animals and Madness
July 24, 2020
Prof. Chris Philo explores the ‘madness’ of both human and animals.
Ep.27 - James Kennaway - The Piano Plague: The Medical Campaign Against Female Musical Education
June 10, 2020
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.
Ep.21 - Mark Jackson - The Age of Stress: Myth or Reality?
June 10, 2020
Traces the history of stress in the twentieth century, exploring scientific theories, clinical formulations and personal experiences of stress and stress-related diseases.
Ep.15 - James Kennaway - Fashionable Stomach Complaints and the Mind in Georgian Britain
June 10, 2020
Examines the development of thinking on the mind-stomach nexus, and how such thinking was incorporated into critiques of modern Britain.
Ep.14 - Catherine Cox - Irish Migration, Institutionalisation and Mental Illness in 19thC England
June 10, 2020
Explores the migratory patterns of Irish patients into and through the Lancashire asylum system in the later 19th century.
Ep.13 - Edgar Jones - How Ideas about Psychiatric Trauma Evolved in the Two World Wars
June 10, 2020
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.
Ep.10 - Gayle Davis - The Female Malady: The Relationship Between Madness, Psychiatry And Gender
June 10, 2020
Explores the relationship between madness, psychiatry and gender over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, using the Royal Edinburgh Asylum as a case study.
Ep.11 - Allan Beveridge - Voices Of The Mad: Patients’ Letters From The Royal Edinburgh Asylum
June 10, 2020
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.