Overview
- Charts attempts to introduce a standard set of psychological diagnostic terms for use in British asylum statistics
- Assesses implications of debates on diagnosis and classification for the development of mental health statistics
- Provides a long durée history of the most widely used terms of psychological diagnosis used in British asylums
Part of the book series: Mental Health in Historical Perspective (MHHP)
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Keywords
- History of psychiatry
- Psychiatric classification
- Mental disorder
- Psychopathologies
- British psychiatry
- Psychiatric epidemiology
- Asylum
- History of insanity
- History of lunacy
- Public health administration
- Social history of medicine
- History of mental health
- Diagnosis
About this book
This book provides a detailed examination of the questions that preoccupied British alienists throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Was insanity one disorder with different forms or a set of distinct natural kinds that each had different causes, symptoms, and outlooks? Was it possible to devise a standardised classification of the insanities that provides a scientific basis to psychological diagnosis? Could statistics on psychological diagnosis provide data to help reveal the nature of insanity?
The classification at the centre of these debates, the Medico-Psychological Association’s Table of the Forms of Insanity, caused deep divisions that took decades to resolve and hampered efforts to develop asylum medical statistics on psychological diagnosis. The use of the classification in national medical statistics was tantamount to being the standard classification for the asylum. As the appeal of statistics grew within medical circles, the debates intensified, and the divisions grew deeper. Despite lofty aims and years of debate, attempts to develop national statistics on psychological diagnosis had achieved very little by the beginning of the twentieth century. The failure of these efforts, hampered by the unwieldy processes adopted by Lunacy administration, led to the Table of the Forms falling into obscurity after its final set of revisions in 1932.
In presenting for the first time the debates surrounding the Table of the Forms of Insanity, this volume calls for a re-evaluation of the history of psychiatric classification through its exploration of the underappreciated links between the standardisation of psychological diagnosis and the development of mental health statistics. By interrogating the links between asylum governance and the clinic, this book presents considerations on classification that still resound today, and provides valuable reading for scholars interested in the social history of medicine, the history of psychiatry, and the history of science.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Kevin Matthew Jones is a lecturer in the Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, at the University of Leeds, UK. He has conducted research on factors shaping public data and the modern history of medicine at the National Archives and the University of Birmingham. Additionally, he has published research on the history of psychology, the history of medicine, and the integrated history and philosophy of science.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Psychological Classification and Diagnosis in Asylum Statistics, 1800 - 1948
Book Subtitle: The British Table of the Forms of Insanity
Authors: Kevin Matthew Jones
Series Title: Mental Health in Historical Perspective
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-46153-8Due: 08 September 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-46156-9Due: 08 September 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-46154-5Due: 08 September 2024
Series ISSN: 2634-6036
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6044
Edition Number: 1
Number of Illustrations: 25 b/w illustrations