Read
Overview
Professors Wood and Yarris are developing a co-authored book manuscript based on their research about the Morningside Hospital. The book is tentatively titled, Madness Outside In: Psychiatry, Public Mental Health Care, and the Imagined Nation in mid-Twentieth-Century America, and is intended for both academic and public audiences interested in the history of psychiatry within the broader context of U.S. history in the mid-20th century. The book is organized into six chapters, outlined below, and draws on our archival research conducted in public and university archives at the University of Oregon, the Oregon Historical Society, and the University of Alaska, as well as on interviews we have conducted with key figures connected to the history of Morningside Hospital, the passage of the Alaska Mental Health Act, and the development of mental health infrastructure in Alaska. Collectively, these chapters respond to the following overarching questions, which have guided this project: the following questions: What does the history of Morningside hospital have to tell us about the relationship between psychiatry and the nation in the mid 20th century? How do deliberations over patient care and financial administration at Morningside ultimately shape discussions over the incorporation of Alaska as the 49th U.S. state? What does the story of the Alaska Mental Health Act have to tell us about popular fears and misconceptions, as well as hopes and promises, related to psychiatry? And, inversely, what do the realities of psychiatric diagnosis, care, and treatment as practiced at Morningside reveal about professional tensions and alliances at this pivotal moment in American psychiatry? In the story of Morningside, how are mental patients represented and how do these representations justify state policy and the governance of mental health care? Finally, what are the legacies of Morningside Hospital for understanding the ongoing challenges of public mental health care, particularly since the 1970s, when most mental institutions were closed? What does Morningside tell us about how public mental health care should be organized, financed, administered and delivered into the present day?