Samantha Hosein (University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago, W.I.)
The ‘Who Cares? Psychiatry in the English-speaking World’ international conference, held from the 6-8 February 2025 at the Universite Paris Nanterre, brought together more than twenty-four participants from all across the globe including the Caribbean, France, England and North America.
The organizing committee of the event which included Cecile Birks, Claire Deligny, Laurence Dubois and Elisabeth Fauquert, of the Universite Paris Nanterre, and Laetitia Sansonetti of the Universite Sorbonne Nouvelle, all engendered a welcoming atmosphere that was most enjoyable as a first-time participant of such a large academic event.
The significance of the conference and its value to academia was further heightened by the very generous bursary sponsored by the Society for the Social History of Medicine (SSHM) of £500, which ultimately allowed for greater accessibility and ease of travel to the location of the event for participants from distant regions, for example, the Caribbean and the Americas.
The event aimed to explore the history of psychiatry in English-speaking territories, with special emphasis on mental institutions, patient treatment and experiences, the pathologization of mental illness and the establishment of policies toward mental healthcare.
The event featured a series of keynote speeches, panel discussions, and an interactive guided tour of the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, which gave deeper insight into, and understanding of the treatment of mentally ill patients in France.
Overview of Sessions
The conference commenced with its first keynote address by Dr. Rory du Plessis, who is a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. His address, ‘Humanizing Stories of Care and Connection: Placing the Chronic patients of the Fort England Hospital, South Africa, 1890-1850’, offered an earnest and thought-provoking perspective on mental illness which, as the title suggests, humanized mental patients and helped to restore their identities as people, rather than mere statistics in an annual asylum report. Dr. du Plessis also highlighted the importance of discernment in psychiatry and the different ways in which mental patients could be perceived through various forms such as images and text.
The discussion of images and their ability to evoke more empathy in the viewer, when compared to the textual annotations of the psychiatrist, was extremely profound and emphasized the compassionate tone of the major theme of the conference which was, essentially, who cares, who should care and who can be considered as curators of the experiences of the mentally ill?
Following the keynote, a series of panel presentations addressed issues within the history of psychiatry in the English-speaking world on several fronts. The first panel covered pertinent challenges of racism in psychiatry and how this bias disproportionately affected colonial migrant populations. The historical discourse further revealed fascinating common themes such as psychiatric spaces as carceral systems, poor mental healthcare services to non-white populations and the inherent marginalization of mentally ill migrant and colonized populations, all of which were present in the mental institutions highlighted by the presenters such as the St. Ann’s Mental Asylum in Trinidad and Tobago, the Cape Colony mental institutions, immigrant repatriations from the United Kingdom and mental institutions within the United States. Additionally, several other panels focused on pertinent topics involving mental health challenges in the LGBTQIA+ communities, the policing of mental distress in the streets of London, psychiatry and the war period and the portrayal of psychiatry in Hollywood on the silver screen!
Throughout, several key themes emerged, reflecting the challenges and complexities of the field of psychiatry in both historical and contemporary periods. A recurring topic was the effect of British mental healthcare systems and their ideologies on patients as it related to treatment, accommodation, art and therapy. This was particularly evident in the sessions titled, ‘Places of Care in England’ and ‘Art and Creativity’ where Drs. Susan Hogan, Fabienne Moine, Hilary Marland and Han Dee exposed elaborate tapestries of patient experiences within mental institutions. Dr. Hogan, for example, highlighted the therapeutic potential of art for people with mental health issues. She further argued that art provided a non-verbal outlet for exploring mental trauma and distress, thus encouraging a safe space for patients to reconcile with their experiences. Comparatively, doctoral candidate from the Queen Mary University of London, Han Dee gave a powerful exposition of the harrowing experiences of their relative, who was incarcerated at the Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire, England. Dee’s vivid description of the institution coupled with primary accounts from their relative of their rigid treatment and restrictive accommodation at Broadmoor painted a picture of misery and allowed for a visceral understanding of common conditions faced by psychiatric patients under such carceral systems.
In addition to the formal sessions, the conference provided excellent opportunities for networking amongst all the participants involved. Post-doctoral and early career historians alike were able to exchange ideas and offer advice and perspective during coffee breaks, the cocktail reception as well as the conference dinner event. In fact, informal discussions at the post-session networking events sparked potential collaborations between various participants, particularly in the areas of colonialism and racial bias in psychiatry, immigration and the experiences of refugees dealing with mental illness in British asylums. This international conference was a resounding success, providing a comprehensive view of mental healthcare and fostering meaningful discussions on themes such as art therapy and rehabilitation, the humanizing of patients with mental illness and the ideological, judicial and social elements which make-up the mental institutions that house mentally ill individuals. Participants left with fresh insights, new academic and professional connections, and practical strategies to apply in their own projects. In answer to the question of ‘who cares?’, it was evident that the participants from around the globe attending this conference, felt the human responsibility to uplift and magnify the experiences and stories of the mentally ill, so often buried in the apathetic records of psychiatrists for centuries.