The history of mental health care in Sheffield explored in new podcast

The second episode of the Overend Knight Medical History podcast shines a light on the stigma around mental health conditions and how things have changed with regards to treatment in Sheffield from the 1800s to the present day.

Over the last century, healthcare for mental illness has undergone massive change to incorporate a social as well as a medical perspective. Professor Allan Pacey takes us on a historical journey which looks at Middlewood Hospital and how two men from the University of Sheffield challenged the status quo. Professor Pacey is joined by several guests including Dr Kate McAllister and Dr Chris Millard, two historians from the University of Sheffield. In addition to Dr Helen Crimlisk, Consultant Psychiatrist at Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust and Dr Josie Soutar, Managing Director for Sheffield Flourish, a local mental health charity.

It was the Asylums Act of Parliament in 1808 that allowed the opening of the ‘South Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum’ in Middlewood. At that time Middlewood was a small village, some distance away from Sheffield, separating ‘inmates’ at the asylum from wider society. Patients were admitted to Middlewood from all over South Yorkshire and in 1880, the maintenance cost was fixed at ten shillings and sixpence a week, approximately forty pounds today.

Acts of Parliament passed in the early 1900s challenged the stigma associated with terms such as ‘mental disorder’ and suggested using ‘hospital’ instead of ‘asylum’ and suggesting early, preventative measures for patients. Sir Arthur Hall and Professor Alec Jenner, both with positions at the University of Sheffield championed removing the stigma around mental illness.

Sir Arthur was an eminent physician who was born and bred in Sheffield and became adviser to the Royal College of Physicians and helped set up the Sheffield Medical School. In the 1890s, he forged new collaborations with Middlewood and created a joint mental health outpatient clinic where people could receive treatment without having to be certified as ‘insane’. Hall believed in treating the mind as well as the body.

Dr Jenner was at Sheffield during a period of improvement in the facilities for the comfort and welfare of patients at Middlewood. These included rehabilitation activities such as car washing and housekeeping. In 1967, he was appointed Professor and began to challenge the views of previous decades on isolation and medicalisation for mental illness instead believing that the total ambience of a person’s life is of central importance to their mental health. He encouraged a focus on listening to patients and recovery of emotional and mental balance.

Continuing the passion of Jenner, experts in Sheffield researching the stigma of mental health illness continue to listen to the lived experiences of patients, including those at Middlewood, to inform the future. Dr Chris Blackmore from the School of Medicine and Population Health with collaborators Amanda Crawley Jackson, Ian McMillan, Patrick Murphy and Brendan Stone and Sheffield Flourish have taken an in-depth look at the changing nature of the language of mental health over time as part of their ."Mind: You're Language" project. This is a Festival of the Mind project, with exhibition, book and Spiegeltent talk. The book will also feature in an Off the Shelf event on October 15 at 12.30pm at the Millennium Gallery .

To listen to the new Overend-Knight Medical History Podcast visit: Spotify, YouTube or the University of Sheffield Player