Tag Archives: post-WWII

New (Free!) Book: Stress in Post-War Britain

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The recently published volume Stress in Post-War Britain (edited by Mark Jackson) is now available for free download. The volume is described as follows:

Adopting a wide range of sources, methods and perspectives, contributors to this volume collectively challenge simplistic narratives of stress and distress in post-war Britain. Tracing the language, concepts and experiences of stress through the post-war decades, the chapters explore the manner in which work and home, as well as war and peace, dictated patterns of mental and physical health. They reveal how employers and doctors, as well as employees and patients, measured and disputed the relative impact of external circumstances and individual temperament on the capacity to adapt to social and cultural change, how normative accounts of masculine strength and feminine frailty determined how men and women were seen to cope with stress, and how scientific investigations of mind and body were integrated into a complex model of disease that has continued to prescribe approaches to health and happiness well into the twenty-first century.

Contents

Stress in Post-War Britain: An Introduction – Mark Jackson

Part I: Stress at Home and Work  

From War to Peace: Families Adapting to Change – Pamela Richardson

Families, Stress and Mental Illness in Devon, 1940s to 1970s – Nicole Baur

Gender, Stress and Alcohol Abuse in Post-War Britain – Ali Haggett

Working Too Hard: Experiences of Worry and Stress in Post-War Britain – Jill Kirby

Industrial Automation and Stress, c.1945–79 – Sarah Hayes

Cultural Change, Stress and Civil Servants’ Occupational Health, c.1967–85 – Debbie Palmer 95

Part II: Models of Stress

Men and Women under Stress: Neuropsychiatric Models of Resilience during and after the Second World War – Mark Jackson

Stomach for the Peace: Psychosomatic Disorders in UK Veterans and Civilians, 1945–55 – Edgar Jones

Food Allergy, Mental Illness and Stress since 1945 – Matthew Smith

Labouring Stress: Scientific Research, Trade Unions and Perceptions of Workplace Stress in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain – Joseph Melling

Creating ‘The Social’: Stress, Domesticity and Attempted Suicide Notes Index – Chris Millard

History of Psychiatry in the 20th Century

Journals, , , ,

The June 2011 issue of History of Psychiatry has just been released online. This is a special issue edited by Volker Hess (left) and Benoît Majerus on the history of twentieth century psychiatry. Among the articles included in the special issue are ones on post-WWII psychiatric changes, chlorpromazine trials in Heidelberg in the 1950s, and the deinstitutionalization of the history of twentieth century psychiatry. Titles, authors, and abstracts follow below.

“Writing the history of psychiatry in the 20th century,” by Volker Hess and Benoît Majerus. The abstract reads,

As editors of the special issue, we try to summarize here the historiographic trends of the field. We argue that the field of research is accommodating the diversity of the institutional, social and political developments. But there is no narrative in sight which can explain the psychiatry of the 20th century, comparable to the authoritative coherence achieved for the 19th century. In contrast, the efforts to extend these narratives to the 20th century are largely missing the most impressive transformation of psychiatric treatment — and self-definition.

“‘Therapeutic community’, psychiatry’s reformers and antipsychiatrists: Reconsidering changes in the field of psychiatry after World War II,” by Catherine Fussinger. The abstract reads, Continue reading History of Psychiatry in the 20th Century →