Asylum Years: Back to the Future?
Glimpses of Institutional Life in the 1970s
Robert Hayward and Andrew Heenan
Published by Free Association Books, 31st March 2025
£18 Available in paperback and as an eBook
Edited by two nurses who worked St. Augustine’s Hospital for the mentally ill in Canterbury, Kent, Asylum Years includes personal accounts from those who worked there during the 1970s.
This book provides a fascinating insight into the workings of an institution, just three decades from the beginnings of mental hospital closure. We face losing this important social and medical history forever, as there are few contemporaneous records. Those that are in existence tend to include only official documents and most are unavailable to the general public. They rarely give precedence to the individual incarcerated, and those that do are often depressing tales of neglect, cruelty or poor practice.
The editors of Asylum Years have attempted to rectify this with their account. Here, they scrutinise the perfidious environment and culture at the heart of the institution and explore its legacy. Asylum Years will provide readers with a new perspective on the development and operation of mental health policies since the tail end of the 20th century. It also examines the impact of institutional values on mental health policy today. Has the legacy of the asylum era impacted on the thinking that underpins health policy today? Evidence gathered here from a number of individuals who worked in St. Augustine’s Hospital in Canterbury, Kent, 50 years ago suggests that there is considerable inheritance from the institutional times that reinforce current mental health policy and mode of provision.
Asylum Years begins with a historical overview of mental health care and provides a detailed ethnographic account at the end of the 20 th century; comparisons from this are examined in the context of present mental health care with a particular focus on underlying thinking, which appears to differ less than that of the previous institutional years. Referring to more recent work, including user-led programmes, “mad studies” and emerging policy models, the authors explore alternatives that could challenge the philosophy or ethos that buttresses thinking about mental health policy and go some way to address the persistent marginalisation and inequalities experienced by people using mental health services.
Robert Hayward graduated with a B.A. in Social Psychology and Social Policy from the University of Kent in 1984. He has over 25 years of experience in community health and NGO development, working extensively in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond. Robert founded InterAction, a charity promoting mental health inclusion, and works as an independent consultant. He is the author (with Peter Barham) of Relocating Madness (Free Association Books).
Andrew Heenan qualified as an RMN at St. Augustine’s Hospital in 1975 and graduated with a BA (Hons) Sociology and Politics from the University of Kent in 1983. He had a career in nursing and journalism, including Clinical Editor of Nursing Times, TV documentary work and as a Trustee of a mental health charity.
Picture Galleries - History in pictures.
Eye Witness - Memories from the aylum.
