“Back to the Future”: Medical Humanities’ Contribution to the Education and Training of Mental Health Professionals

This conference, organised by Dr Maria Turri, Professor John Hall and Dr Marius Turda from Oxford Brookes University (1 November 2017), afforded a rare opportunity for mental health professionals and academics from the humanities to share ideas and experiences.  

In his keynote address, Professor Femi Oyebode (University of Birmingham) claimed that while doctors tend to think in terms of “facts”, they should also consider the impact of disease on the sufferer and those closest to them. Experiencing the patient-doctor encounter and patient accounts of their condition in literature, art, theatre and cinema can help trainee medical professionals better understand the patient’s perspective.

We learned how art and cinema could be used therapeutically with examples from an Oxford-based art counselling project and an Italian research project into the power of cinema in triggering memory.

We also heard about the Ashmolean Museum’s student engagement programme which helps to develop the skill of “close-looking” – an essential aspect of any medical examination.

It was clear that history could also make a contribution to the mental health professions.  Professor Waltraud Ernst explained that medical research often overlooked the historical dimension of such issues as problem drinking amongst the UK’s ethnic communities, leading to inaccurate generalisations and inappropriate health and educational policies. 

Jane Freebody highlighted teaching from nineteenth-century moral therapists and early twentieth-century occupational therapists which focused on developing self-esteem and a sense of usefulness, the satisfaction of growing your own food, and the joy associated with creativity – all of which have resonance today. 

We learned from Dr Bridget Escolme (Queen Mary, University of London) that the “mad” characters in historic plays were not passive figures of fun, but laughed right back at their audience.

The panel discussion at the end of the day concluded that the humanities had much to offer in the training of mental health professionals.  A focus on human relationships, the fostering of creativity and an examination of the origin of contemporary issues, ideas and practices could all add value to a training programme.

Conference report by Jane Freebody, PhD Candidate, Oxford Brookes University

Speakers:

·         Professor Femi Oyebode (University of Birmingham)

·         Dr Maria Turri (Oxford Brookes University/University of Oxford)

·         Dr Jim Harris (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

·         Professor John Hall (Oxford Brookes University)

·         Ms Teresita Valverde (Tobias School of Art and Therapy, East Grinstead)

·         Dr Daniela Treveri-Gennari (Oxford Brookes University)

·         Professor Waltraud Ernst (Oxford Brookes University)

·         Ms Jane Freebody (PhD Cand., Oxford Brookes University)

·         Dr Bridget Escolme (Queen Mary, University of London)

Photograph: Two of the Conference Organisers Maria Turri and Marius Turda

“Alcohol, Psychiatry and Society” – International Research Symposium, 29-30 June 2017

Academics of eleven different nationalities gathered for a symposium to address the historical links between alcohol, psychiatry and society (Convened by Professor Waltraud Ernst, Oxford Brookes University, and Professor Thomas Mueller, University of Ulm/Centre for Psychiatry, Suedwuerttemberg Ravensburg). We learned that definitions of excessive drinking, drunkenness, alcoholism, and addiction varied across national contexts and that what was an acceptable – or even desirable – level of drinking in one culture, was considered problematic in another. Alcohol could be a sign of civilisation or individual status; it could be perceived as a medical treatment as well as a poison; and as a source of tax revenue or mental degeneration.

The symposium took us from the “gin craze” of eighteenth-century London to the streets of fin-de-siècle Paris, where drunk horses, dogs and cats made public nuisances of themselves, and onto post-war Japan, where a drinking culture developed despite the inability of the Japanese to metabolise alcohol effectively. The complexities of alcohol in the colonial settings of Algeria and Nigeria were addressed, as were the deliberations of early twentieth- century Greek psychiatrists who were divided between those who condemned alcohol for its adverse effects on health and those who recognised its value to the Greek economy. We heard about drunk Irish asylum nurses in the nineteenth century and the use of alcohol to build up the strength of women suffering from puerperal insanity. A variety of approaches to the treatment of alcoholism were discussed, from the administration of LSD to work therapy and self-help groups.

French psychiatrists, who recognised the link between “lunacy” and “inebriety” in the late nineteenth century, propagated the belief that alcoholism was inheritable and would ultimately lead to the degeneration of society, thus fuelling anxiety about mental and physical degeneration across the continent. By the end of the century even moderate drinking was frowned upon by the German state. In the USSR and communist Czechoslovakia, alcohol was believed to compromise a citizen’s ability to work and to threaten productivity.

The papers highlighted the influence of transnational networks in terms of responses to the social and individual problems caused by alcoholism, but they also revealed that alcohol can be perceived very differently in different national contexts and cultures.

Jane Freebody, cand. PhD, Department of History, Philosophy and Culture, Oxford Brookes University