Staff, Students and the General Public are invited to attend the Henry Cohen History of Medicine lecture 2025 entitled “Can History Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis? Five Insights from the Past” with speaker Professor Matt Smith from the University of Strathclyde.
Rates of mental illness are rising, waiting lists are lengthy and recent BBC programmes have revealed scandalous conditions and abuse at psychiatric facilities. Apart from demanding more funds to support an ineffective mental health system, few solutions have been suggested. What if we’re looking in the wrong place? History provides examples of preventive approaches to mental health, ranging from the role of diet and nature in preserving good mental health to acknowledging the detrimental effect of socioeconomic problems. Past societies also accepted that there were many different ways of being ‘normal’. Most solutions, historic and present, have required investment. What are we willing to pay?
Matthew Smith is Professor of Health History at the University of Strathclyde’s Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, where he is also one of the University’s co-leads for the strategic theme: Health and Wellbeing. His books, include The First Resort: The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States and Hyperactive: The Controversial History of ADHD. He is co-editor of three edited volumes, including Preventing Mental Illness: Past, Present and Future and Deinstitutionalisation and After: Post-War Psychiatry in the Western World. Matthew is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and co-edits the Palgrave book series ‘Mental Health in Historical Perspective’.
The event takes place on Thursday, 22 May at 17:30 at the Liverpool Medical Institution, followed by an informal drinks reception at 18:30-19:30.
The event is free and registration is required. To register for the event and for further information, please click here