Why Talk about Madness?

This short, interventionist book argues for the value of historical perspectives on mental health, exploring how these histories can and should inform debates about mental healthcare today. Why is it important to study the history of madness? What does it mean to voice these histories? What can these tell us about the challenges and legacies of mental health care across the world today? Offering new ways of thinking - and talking - about 'mad' history, Catharine Coleborne explores the key topics in this field, including policy, notions of care, advocacy, institutional trauma, deinstitutionalisation and intervention. The book takes a global approach, though reflects especially on New Zealand as a case study, whose recent interventions into public reconciliation around the problem of institutional care and violence are causing ripples around the world. Coleborne argues that by talking about the history of madness, historians play a vital role in creating a continuity of lived experience, from those institutionalised in the past to those experiencing mental illness in the present.