Sarah Chaney
Biographic Data
| ID | 3066283 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah Chaney |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah |
| FAMILY NAME | Chaney |
| SIGNATURE | CHANEY S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Queen Mary University of London |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0335-9863 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
The persistence of history
This article offers an overview, historicising how both ‘race’ and racism have been seen as an aetiological root for mental ill health in people racialised as black, and contextualising the rise of transcultural psychiatry. Heeding the calls of the few historians to study race, mental health, and transcultural psychiatry in the metropole and across the globe, this article includes a wider variety of voices in order to create a dialogue between th…
The politics of recovery
In modern mental health care, ‘recovery’ does not necessarily mean the same thing for clinicians, service users, and survivor groups. This divergence is especially stark where self-injury is concerned. For clinicians, recovery often refers to cessation of self-injury; for those with lived experience, self-harm may be a temporary or long-term method of navigating trauma and distress. This article explores how the survivor-led model, which regards …
Lyndsay Galpin, Male Suicide and Masculinity in 19th Century Britain
Suicide is a catastrophic event. The ripples of a death extend through surrounding communities, bringing into question previously held certainties—about others, about relationships, about health, behaviour and identity. Speculation abounds in newspapers, magazines and official reports as writers search for meaning in the lives and deaths of those who die by their own hand. It is this focus on the process of forging meaning from the tragic deaths …
Women Listening to Women
During research into the history of self-harm, Sarah had to complete an occupational health survey for a new job. One question asked, rather intrusively, if I had ever seen a psychiatrist and, if so, what was the outcome. My first impulse was to answer: ‘the outcome was that I became a historian’. Critical history can be a powerful lens to examine our own experiences by seeing them as part of a broader picture: this is what I tried to do in my bo…
Before compassion
The word 'compassion' is ubiquitous in modern healthcare. Yet few writers agree on what the term means, and what makes it an essential trait in nursing. In this article, I take a historical approach to the problem of understanding compassion. Although many modern writers have assumed that compassion is a universal and unchanging trait, my research reveals that the term is extremely new to healthcare, only becoming widely used in 2009. Of course, …
Am I a researcher or a self-harmer? Mental health, objectivity and identity politics in history
The different models of self-harm in other eras can challenge the presumed universality of modern concepts, from psychiatric diagnoses to the very idea of objectivity in science and medicine. In this paper I argue that the history of psychiatry is not a neutral set of ideas by which we understand the past but an opportunity to reflect on, critique and improve modern mental healthcare. By writing as omniscient narrators of the past, historians oft…
The action of the imagination
Histories of dynamic psychotherapy in the late 19 th century have focused on practitioners in continental Europe, and interest in psychological therapies within British asylum psychiatry has been largely overlooked. Yet Daniel Hack Tuke (1827–95) is acknowledged as one of the earliest authors to use the term ‘psycho-therapeutics’, including a chapter on the topic in his 1872 volume, Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Heal…
A History of Self-Harm in Britain
A History of Self-Harm explores British psychiatric approaches to overdosing and self-cutting from approximately 1930 to 1980. In this era, Chris Millard explains, the archetype for self-harm shifted from a model focused on self-poisoning, formed at the juncture of psychiatric social services and Accident and Emergency departments, to one in which self-inflicted cuts were emphasized, based on studies performed in inpatient psychiatric units. Asso…
Exhibiting madness in museums
"Exhibiting madness in museums: remembering psychiatry through collections and display." International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(2), pp. 197–198
A Hideous Torture on Himself”
This paper suggests that late nineteenth-century definitions of self-mutilation, a new category of psychiatric symptomatology, were heavily influenced by the use of self-injury as a rhetorical device in the novel, for the literary text held a high status in Victorian psychology. In exploring Dimmesdale's "self-mutilation" in The Scarlet Letter in conjunction with psychiatric case histories, the paper indicates a number of common techniques and th…
Am I a researcher or a self-harmer? Mental health, objectivity and identity politics in history
The different models of self-harm in other eras can challenge the presumed universality of modern concepts, from psychiatric diagnoses to the very idea of objectivity in science and medicine. In this paper I argue that the history of psychiatry is not a neutral set of ideas by which we understand the past but an opportunity to reflect on, critique and improve modern mental healthcare. By writing as omniscient narrators of the past, historians oft…
The action of the imagination
Histories of dynamic psychotherapy in the late 19 th century have focused on practitioners in continental Europe, and interest in psychological therapies within British asylum psychiatry has been largely overlooked. Yet Daniel Hack Tuke (1827–95) is acknowledged as one of the earliest authors to use the term ‘psycho-therapeutics’, including a chapter on the topic in his 1872 volume, Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Heal…
The politics of recovery
In modern mental health care, ‘recovery’ does not necessarily mean the same thing for clinicians, service users, and survivor groups. This divergence is especially stark where self-injury is concerned. For clinicians, recovery often refers to cessation of self-injury; for those with lived experience, self-harm may be a temporary or long-term method of navigating trauma and distress. This article explores how the survivor-led model, which regards …
A Hideous Torture on Himself”
This paper suggests that late nineteenth-century definitions of self-mutilation, a new category of psychiatric symptomatology, were heavily influenced by the use of self-injury as a rhetorical device in the novel, for the literary text held a high status in Victorian psychology. In exploring Dimmesdale's "self-mutilation" in The Scarlet Letter in conjunction with psychiatric case histories, the paper indicates a number of common techniques and th…
Exhibiting madness in museums
"Exhibiting madness in museums: remembering psychiatry through collections and display." International Journal of Heritage Studies, 21(2), pp. 197–198
A History of Self-Harm in Britain
A History of Self-Harm explores British psychiatric approaches to overdosing and self-cutting from approximately 1930 to 1980. In this era, Chris Millard explains, the archetype for self-harm shifted from a model focused on self-poisoning, formed at the juncture of psychiatric social services and Accident and Emergency departments, to one in which self-inflicted cuts were emphasized, based on studies performed in inpatient psychiatric units. Asso…
The action of the imagination
Histories of dynamic psychotherapy in the late 19 th century have focused on practitioners in continental Europe, and interest in psychological therapies within British asylum psychiatry has been largely overlooked. Yet Daniel Hack Tuke (1827–95) is acknowledged as one of the earliest authors to use the term ‘psycho-therapeutics’, including a chapter on the topic in his 1872 volume, Illustrations of the Influence of the Mind upon the Body in Heal…
Am I a researcher or a self-harmer? Mental health, objectivity and identity politics in history
The different models of self-harm in other eras can challenge the presumed universality of modern concepts, from psychiatric diagnoses to the very idea of objectivity in science and medicine. In this paper I argue that the history of psychiatry is not a neutral set of ideas by which we understand the past but an opportunity to reflect on, critique and improve modern mental healthcare. By writing as omniscient narrators of the past, historians oft…
Before compassion
The word 'compassion' is ubiquitous in modern healthcare. Yet few writers agree on what the term means, and what makes it an essential trait in nursing. In this article, I take a historical approach to the problem of understanding compassion. Although many modern writers have assumed that compassion is a universal and unchanging trait, my research reveals that the term is extremely new to healthcare, only becoming widely used in 2009. Of course, …
Lyndsay Galpin, Male Suicide and Masculinity in 19th Century Britain
Suicide is a catastrophic event. The ripples of a death extend through surrounding communities, bringing into question previously held certainties—about others, about relationships, about health, behaviour and identity. Speculation abounds in newspapers, magazines and official reports as writers search for meaning in the lives and deaths of those who die by their own hand. It is this focus on the process of forging meaning from the tragic deaths …
Women Listening to Women
During research into the history of self-harm, Sarah had to complete an occupational health survey for a new job. One question asked, rather intrusively, if I had ever seen a psychiatrist and, if so, what was the outcome. My first impulse was to answer: ‘the outcome was that I became a historian’. Critical history can be a powerful lens to examine our own experiences by seeing them as part of a broader picture: this is what I tried to do in my bo…
The persistence of history
This article offers an overview, historicising how both ‘race’ and racism have been seen as an aetiological root for mental ill health in people racialised as black, and contextualising the rise of transcultural psychiatry. Heeding the calls of the few historians to study race, mental health, and transcultural psychiatry in the metropole and across the globe, this article includes a wider variety of voices in order to create a dialogue between th…
The politics of recovery
In modern mental health care, ‘recovery’ does not necessarily mean the same thing for clinicians, service users, and survivor groups. This divergence is especially stark where self-injury is concerned. For clinicians, recovery often refers to cessation of self-injury; for those with lived experience, self-harm may be a temporary or long-term method of navigating trauma and distress. This article explores how the survivor-led model, which regards …
Psychology (8 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices (6 works) · Law (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Psychotherapist (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes (4 works) · History (4 works)