The Last Asylum: A memoir of madness in our times
- Submitting institution
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Queen Mary University of London
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 1383
- Type
- A - Authored book
- DOI
-
-
- Publisher
- Hamish Hamilton
- ISBN
- 9780241145098
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- February
- Year of publication
- 2014
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Through life-writing and scholarly research, The Last Asylum explores changing treatment regimes, the social contexts of mental health, and therapeutic discourses in the UK. Taylor combines a first-person account of mental illness with a historical study of the deinstitutionalisation of the UK mental health system. Research for the book included Taylor’s personal archive (13 volumes of journals, audio-recordings, psychiatric records) and interviews with many mental health professionals and former patients. Extensive use was made of the extensive Friern archives held in the London Metropolitan Archives, as well as the British Library Life Story collection (50 recorded interviews with mental health users). Other research materials included reports from UK government and non-governmental bodies concerned with mental health policy and practice between 1980 and 2010, and a large secondary literature dealing with the deinstitutionalisation process and the rise of ‘community care’ in the UK. Taylor reveals changing provisions for mental healthcare in the UK, from the closure of Victorian asylums through care in the community, the medicalisation of mental illness and 20th century ‘talking cures’.
Editions: Chicago UP 2015; Chinese edition 2016; Spanish edition forthcoming. The Last Asylum was chosen as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Book of the Week’ in February 2014. It was widely reviewed, and Taylor was interviewed for Huffington Post Canada, Macleans Canada, Guardian Books and Cambridge online. She has discussed the book at international literary festivals and for BBC Radio London, Woman’s Hour, Today Programme, BBC World Service Newshour, BBC Radio5 Live, Irish Radio, BBC Radio Scotland, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Canada TV AM, Television Ontario, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and California Public Radio.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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