Historical statements about mental health in correct date order. How many did you get right? You might be surprised!

1. Mental Health Awareness Historical statements about mental health in correct date order. How many did you get right? You might be surprised!

2. “If a man is mad, he shall not be at large in the city, but his family shall keep him at home in any way which they can: or if not let them pay a penalty.” Plato Laws Book XI, 5th Century BC

3. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” Polonius in Hamlet by William Shakespeare, circa 1601

4. “Beyond prayer, little can be done for serious melancholy and mania.” Robert Burton Anatomy of Melancholy, 1621

5. “Lycanthropy, wolf-madness, is a disease in which men run barking and hunting about graves and fields in the night, lying hid for most part of all day and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves or some such beasts.” Robert Bayfield a Treatise De MorburumCapitis, 1663

6. “They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn, they outvoted me.” Nathaniel Lee17th century playwright protesting about being held in Bethlem Hospital

7. “Madness is a distemper of such a nature, that very little of real use can be said concerning it; the immediate causes will forever disappoint our search, and the cure of that disorder depends on management as much as medicine.” John Munro Dr. Battie’s Treatise on Madness, 1758

8. “We find the prisoner not guilty: he being under the influence of insanity at the time that the act was committed.” First time that an Insanity Plea was accepted– verdict of jury at trial of James Hadfield, who shot at George III. Hadfield believed that he had to die to save mankind, and he thought that the surest way to ensure his execution was to assassinate the king, 1800

9. “Madness has been placed exclusively in the mind. I object to this opinion… because the mind is incapable of any operations independently of impressions communicated to it through the medium of the body.” Benjamin RushMedical Inquiries and Observations upon Diseases of the Mind, 1812

10. First campaigning user group is established by John Perceval, the Alleged Lunatics Friend Society. 1845

11. The Lunacy Act made the provision of public asylums compulsory. 1845

12. The diagnosis of ‘drapetomania’ – an illness that manifests itself by an irrestrainable propensity to run away – is commonly given to slaves. Used in USA around 1850

13. Mental After Care Association (MACA) established. 1879

14. The term ‘schizophrenia’ is coined and sufferers are described as ‘strange, puzzling, inconceivable, uncanny, incapable, sinister, frightening… It is impossible to approach them as equals’. Manfred Bleuler, 1911

15. Mental Treatment Act Patients can be admitted to hospital on a voluntary basis, 1930

16. Mental Health Act 1959

17. The Suicide Act ended the criminal status of suicide. 1961

18. National Schizophrenia Fellowship formed. 1972

19. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its classification of mental disorder after campaigning by gay rights groups. 1973

20. Mental Health Act 1983

21. Survivors Speak Outestablished. 1985

22. “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.” Margaret Thatcher Woman’s Own, 1987

23. NHS and Community Care Act 1990

24. “We must allow ourselves to be moved by others. Psychiatry has lost touch with this ability, indeed it is questionable whether it ever possessed it in the first place.” Philip Thomas The Dialectics of Schizophrenia, 1997

25. “This is where the policy of care in the community has failed. Its failure to deal effectively with the most severe cases has dealt a blow to all mental health efforts and lost the confidence of the public.” Frank DobsonHealth Secretary at launch of modernising Mental Health Services, 1998