His Brain was Wrong, His Mind Astray

Families and the Language of Insanity in New South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, 1880s-1910

Bibliographic Data

ID6080334
AuthorsCatharine Coleborne (0000-0002-9289-4755, University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume31
Issue1
Pages45-65
Publication date2006-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Family History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0363-1990 • E-ISSN: 1552-5473
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0363199005283009
OpenAlexW2094122842
LanguageEN
Citations received5

Family and friends made descriptions of the behavior of individuals at the time of their committal to institutions for the insane in Australasian colonies, including Gladesville Hospital for the Insane, Sydney, New South Wales; Goodna Hospital for the Insane, near Brisbane in Queensland; and the Auckland Mental Hospital in New Zealand’s North Island, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These lay descriptions of insanity, gleaned from those close to patients by doctors during initial interviews at the stage of asylum committal, eventually became marginal notes in clinical patient cases. This article seeks to understand this interplay between lay descriptions by family and friends and the asylum’s use of these descriptions in its profiling and diagnosis of patients. It argues that patient case notes should be reexamined as rich sources of information about families, households, and, most importantly, the language used by ordinary people to describe mental states

Criminology · Genealogy · Insanity · Mental hospital · Psychiatry · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Psychology

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