Chris Philo FAcSS (born 1960) is Professor of Geography at the Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, the University of Glasgow.
Philo graduated from the Sidney Sussex College of Cambridge University and became a Research Fellow there. In 1989 he joined the Department of Geography at the University of Wales, Lampeter, holding that post for six years, until 1995. He then joined the University of Glasgow as a Professor, becoming head of the department in 2002. In 2006 Chris was replaced as Head of Department by Professor Trevor Hoey and was enlisted on the Geography and Environmental Studies RAE Sub-Panel.
His interests have been in the historical geographies of 'madness' and mental health and mental health care provision. Later, he has contributed to the emerging, and increasingly significant, sub-discipline of animal geographies, with eclectic writing on other topics. A devotee of the work of Michel Foucault, his research extended and localised Foucault's history of madness to England and Wales. Over a decade in the writing, his major work, based on an extensive PhD thesis, was published by a minor press in Wales as A Geographical History of Institutional Provision for the Insane from Medieval Times to the 1860s in England and Wales: The Space Reserved for Insanity. Always a generous collaborator, he has co-edited numerous general anthologies of human geography.
The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to a psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act. This is contrasted with an excuse of provocation, in which the defendant is responsible, but the responsibility is lessened due to a temporary mental state. It is also contrasted with the justification of self defense or with the mitigation of imperfect self-defense. The insanity defense is also contrasted with a finding that a defendant cannot stand trial in a criminal case because a mental disease prevents them from effectively assisting counsel, from a civil finding in trusts and estates where a will is nullified because it was made when a mental disorder prevented a testator from recognizing the natural objects of their bounty, and from involuntary civil commitment to a mental institution, when anyone is found to be gravely disabled or to be a danger to themself or to others.
Philippe Pinel was a French physician, precursor of psychiatry and incidentally a zoologist. He was instrumental in the development of a more humane psychological approach to the custody and care of psychiatric patients, referred to today as moral therapy. He worked for the abolition of the shackling of mental patients by chains and, more generally, for the humanisation of their treatment. He also made notable contributions to the classification of mental disorders and has been described by some as "the father of modern psychiatry".
Historically, mental disorders have had three major explanations, namely, the supernatural, biological and psychological models. For much of recorded history, deviant behavior has been considered supernatural and a reflection of the battle between good and evil. When confronted with unexplainable, irrational behavior and by suffering and upheaval, people have perceived evil. In fact, in the Persian Empire from 550 to 330 B.C., all physical and mental disorders were considered the work of the devil. Physical causes of mental disorders have been sought in history. Hippocrates was important in this tradition as he identified syphilis as a disease and was, therefore, an early proponent of the idea that psychological disorders are biologically caused. This was a precursor to modern psycho-social treatment approaches to the causation of psychopathology, with the focus on psychological, social and cultural factors. Well known philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, etc., wrote about the importance of fantasies, dreams, and thus anticipated, to some extent, the fields of psychoanalytic thought and cognitive science that were later developed. They were also some of the first to advocate for humane and responsible care for individuals with psychological disturbances.
University of Wales, Lampeter was a university in Lampeter, Wales. Founded in 1822, and incorporated by royal charter in 1828, it was the oldest degree awarding institution in Wales, with limited degree awarding powers since 1852. It was a self-governing college of the University of Wales from 1972 until its merger with Trinity University College in 2010 to form the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
John Conolly was an English psychiatrist. He published the volume Indications of Insanity in 1830. In 1839, he was appointed resident physician to the Middlesex County Asylum where he introduced the principle of non-restraint into the treatment of the insane, which led to non-restraint became accepted practice throughout England. With colleagues he founded the 'Provincial Medical and Surgical Association', and founded the 'British and Foreign Medical Review, or, A Quarterly Journal of Practical Medicine'.
Ian Cook is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter in the UK, and formerly senior lecturer in geography at the University of Birmingham, and lecturer at the University of Wales, Lampeter.
David Sadler is a professor and a researcher of human geography.
Keith Gilbert Robbins was a British historian and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, Lampeter. Professor Robbins was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and Magdalen and St Antony's College, Oxford.
Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason is an examination by Michel Foucault of the evolution of the meaning of madness in the cultures and laws, politics, philosophy, and medicine of Europe—from the Middle Ages until the end of the 18th century—and a critique of the idea of history and of the historical method.
Moral treatment was an approach to mental disorder based on humane psychosocial care or moral discipline that emerged in the 18th century and came to the fore for much of the 19th century, deriving partly from psychiatry or psychology and partly from religious or moral concerns. The movement is particularly associated with reform and development of the asylum system in Western Europe at that time. It fell into decline as a distinct method by the 20th century, however, due to overcrowding and misuse of asylums and the predominance of biomedical methods. The movement is widely seen as influencing certain areas of psychiatric practice up to the present day. The approach has been praised for freeing sufferers from shackles and barbaric physical treatments, instead considering such things as emotions and social interactions, but has also been criticised for blaming or oppressing individuals according to the standards of a particular social class or religion.
The Criminal Lunatics Act 1800 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that required and established a set procedure for the indefinite detention of mentally ill offenders. It was passed through the House of Commons in direct reaction to the trial of James Hadfield, who attempted to assassinate King George III.
Animal geography is a subfield of the nature–society/human–environment branch of geography as well as a part of the larger, interdisciplinary umbrella of human–animal studies (HAS). Animal geography is defined as the study of "the complex entanglings of human–animal relations with space, place, location, environment and landscape" or "the study of where, when, why and how nonhuman animals intersect with human societies". Recent work advances these perspectives to argue about an ecology of relations in which humans and animals are enmeshed, taking seriously the lived spaces of animals themselves and their sentient interactions with not just human but other nonhuman bodies as well.
Nikolas Rose is a British sociologist and social theorist. He is Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Research School of Social Sciences, in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University and Honorary Professor at the Institute of Advanced Studies at University College London. From January 2012 to until his retirement in April 2021 he was Professor of Sociology in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at King's College London, having joined King's to found this new Department. He was the Co-Founder and Co-Director of King's ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health. Before moving to King's College London, he was the James Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics, director and founder of LSE's BIOS Centre for the Study of Bioscience, Biomedicine, Biotechnology and Society from 2002 to 2011, and Head of the LSE Department of Sociology (2002–2006). He was previously Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, where he was Head of the Department of Sociology, Pro-Warden for Research and Head of the Goldsmiths Centre for Urban and Community Research and Director of a major evaluation of urban regeneration in South East London. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Arts and the Academy of Social Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Sussex, England, and Aarhus University, Denmark.
Dr William Alexander Francis Browne (1805–1885) was one of the most significant British asylum doctors of the nineteenth century. At Montrose Asylum (1834–1838) in Angus and at the Crichton Royal in Dumfries (1838–1857), Browne introduced activities for patients including writing, group activity and drama, pioneered early forms of occupational therapy and art therapy, and initiated one of the earliest collections of artistic work by patients in a psychiatric hospital. In an age which rewarded self-control, Browne encouraged self-expression and may therefore be counted alongside William Tuke, Vincenzo Chiarugi and John Conolly as one of the pioneers of the moral treatment of mental illness. Sociologist Andrew Scull has identified Browne's career with the institutional climax of nineteenth century psychiatry.
"Browne was one of the reformers of the asylum care of the insane whose improvements and innovations were chronicled in his annual reports from The Crichton Royal Institution, but who in addition published almost on the threshold of his career a sort of manifesto of what he wished to see accomplished...." Richard Hunter and Ida Macalpine (1963) Three Hundred Years of Psychiatry 1535–1860, page 865.
The University of Wales Trinity Saint David is a multi-campus university with three main campuses in South West Wales, in Carmarthen, Lampeter and Swansea, a fourth campus in London, England, and learning centres in Cardiff, Wales, and Birmingham, England.
Owain Jones FGS is a Professor of Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University (UK). He was previously Reader in Cultural Geography: Place, Nature and Landscape at the Countryside & Community Research Institute and member of staff of the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, Faculty of Environment and Technology, University of the West of England.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the psychiatric survivors movement:
Paul J. Cloke, was an author and professor of geography. He was known as the founding editor of the international and multidisciplinary academic Journal of Rural Studies, published by Elsevier Science. As of 2012, he was a faculty member of the Department of Geography at the University of Exeter.
The General Hospital of Paris was an Ancien Régime institution intended as a place of confinement of the poor. Formed by a royal edict during the reign of Louis XIV, it aimed to address the recurring problem of begging and the Cour des miracles, as well as to house invalids. The General Hospital's authority stretched beyond its premises to include all the poor in Paris.
Philip Andrew Crang, FAcSS, is a British cultural and human geographer. Since 2005, he has been Professor of Cultural Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.