Containing Madness

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvii

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2. Introduction: Psy, Gender, and Containment

   • Jennifer M. Kilty, Erin Dej

   Pages 1-12

3. Conclusion: Expanding the Concept of ‘Containment’

   • Erin Dej, Jennifer M. Kilty

   Pages 267-280

4. Historical ‘Psy’ Discourses Revisited

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13

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   2. Sickening Institutions: A Feminist Sociological Analysis and Critique of Religion, Medicine, and Psychiatry

      • Heidi Rimke

      Pages 15-39

   3. Traditions of Colonial and Eugenic Violence: Immigration Detention in Canada

      • Ameil J. Joseph

      Pages 41-65

   4. Gender, Madness, and the Legacies of the Prisons Information Group (GIP)

      • Michael Rembis

      Pages 67-89

5. Containing Bodies

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 91-91

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   2. Patients’ Perspective on Mechanical Restraints in Acute and Emergency Psychiatric Settings: A Poststructural Feminist Analysis

      • Jean Daniel Jacob, Dave Holmes, Désiré Rioux, Pascale Corneau

      Pages 93-117

   3. Carceral Optics and the Crucible of Segregation: Revisiting Scenes of State-Sanctioned Violence Against Incarcerated Women

      • Jennifer M. Kilty

      Pages 119-144

   4. Gender Dysphoria and the Medical Gaze in Anglo-American Carceral Regimes

      • Kyle Kirkup

      Pages 145-165

6. The Asylum and Beyond

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 167-167

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   2. Uncovering the Heteronormative Order of the Psychiatric Institution: A Queer Reading of Chart Documentation and Language Use

      • Andrea Daley, Lori E. Ross

      Pages 169-189

   3. Assessing ‘Insight’, Determining Agency and Autonomy: Implicating Social Identities

      • Merrick D. Pilling, Andrea Daley, Margaret F. Gibson, Lori E. Ross, Juveria Zaheer

      Pages 191-213

   4. When a Man’s Home Isn’t a Castle: Hegemonic Masculinity Among Men Experiencing Homelessness and Mental Illness

      • Erin Dej

      Pages 215-239

   5. Dangerous Discourses: Masculinity, Coercion, and Psychiatry

      • Christopher Van Veen, Mohamed Ibrahim, Marina Morrow

      Pages 241-265

7. Back Matter

   Pages 281-286

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This collection explores the discursive production and treatment of mental distress as it is mediated by gender and race in different institutional contexts. Featuring analyses of the prison, the psychiatric hospital, immigration detention, and other locales, this book explores the multiple interlocking oppressions that result in the diagnosis and medical, psychological, and psychiatric treatment of individuals constituted as ‘mentally ill’ at various historical moments and across institutional spaces. Contributors unpack how feminine, masculine, and transgender bodies are made up as mentally ill/sick/deviant by way of biomedical and institutional knowledges and discourses and are intervened upon by different institutional and expert authorities.

• Critical Mental Health
• Critical Psychology
• Critical Psychiatry
• Women’s Studies
• Gender Studies
• Feminist Studies
• Mental Illness
• Crime
• Legal Studies
• Imprisonment
• Psy care in prison
• Healthcare in prison
• Criminalization
• Prison
• Punishment

• Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada

  Jennifer M. Kilty

• Department of Criminology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Brantford, ON, Canada

  Erin Dej

Jennifer M. Kilty is Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, Canada. Her research interests include the criminalization of HIV nondisclosure, law and emotions, and women’s experiences of confinement.


Erin Dej is Postdoctoral Fellow with the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness. She received her doctorate in criminology from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her research interests include homelessness, mental health, autonomy among marginalized people, and homelessness prevention.

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