The asylum and the community

Abstract

This chapter will argue that the development of mental health policy was hugely influenced by conceptions of space and place. By the middle of the 20th century the asylum had become, in the public and sociological imagination a Gothic institution of seclusion and abuse. The chapter will explore the development of this representation of the asylum. The final representations of the asylum contrast dramatically with the original ones that saw the new institutions as a modern, progressive deinstitutionalisation was to present the community in binary opposition to the asylum. Community based services would, almost by reason of their location, lead to the creation of a new form of inclusive mental health provision. This is based on an idealised notion of community. As the pressures on mental health services grew, a range of social policies that were introduced that meant that urban communities, in particular, became exclusionary rather than inclusionary.