'Hearing voices'

: exploring and examining the history of psychiatry in Ireland

Abstract

This thesis for the degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) in history focuses on eleven single-author papers in peer-reviewed journals, three single-author book chapters, and three single-author books: Ada English: Patriot and Psychiatrist (2014), He Lost Himself Completely: Shell Shock and its treatment at Dublin's Richmond War Hospital (1916-19) (2014), and Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland (2016). In the accompanying critical appraisal, I explore these publications in the context of the criteria for higher degrees.

In this work, I use my training in both history and psychiatry to balance 'demedicalisation' with 'medicalisation' in order to maintain critical historical awareness and avoid the omission of clinical medicine from history. This paradigm supports a dynamic balance between historical awareness and the medical gaze.

Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland makes original contributions to several specific areas (e.g., particular institutions, various diagnoses, pieces of legislation, health policies, leading figures) and concludes that, despite Ireland's high rate of psychiatric hospitalisation, Ireland never had an epidemic of mental illness - we had an epidemic of 'mental hospitals'. A combination of poverty, poor healthcare, hastily enacted legislation, and a preference for institutional solutions to social problems resulted in Ireland's vast asylum system which was, I argue, as much a social creation as a medical one.

Hearing Voices draws on clinical archives from various 'mental hospitals', as well as legislation, policy documents, and historical and medical literature. I performed biochemical analysis of water from Tobar na nGealt ('well of the mad') in Kerry, to investigate reports of high levels of lithium, used for the treatment of bipolar disorder.
Hearing Voices provides a unique diversity of historical, social, epidemiological, and medical evidence, and original analysis, to explore an interplay of social and medical influences that was complex, dynamic, and fascinating.

Date of Award	Jul 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Supervisor	Olwen Purdue (Supervisor) & Paul Corthorn (Supervisor)