"His brain was wrong, his mind astray": Families and the language of insanity in New South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, 1880s-1910

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dc.contributor.authorColeborne, Catharineen_US
dc.date.accessioned2008-03-19T04:56:57Z
dc.date.available2007-07-10en_US
dc.date.available2008-03-19T04:56:57Z
dc.date.issued2006-01-01en_US
dc.description.abstractFamily and friends made descriptions of the behavior of individuals at the time of their committal to institutions for the insane in Australasian colonies, including Gladesville Hospital for the Insane, Sydney, New South Wales; Goodna Hospital for the Insane, near Brisbane in Queensland; and the Auckland Mental Hospital in New Zealand's North Island, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These lay descriptions of insanity, gleaned from those close to patients by doctors during initial interviews at the stage of asylum committal, eventually became marginal notes in clinical patient cases. This article seeks to understand this interplay between lay descriptions by family and friends and the asylum's use of these descriptions in its profiling and diagnosis of patients. It argues that patient case notes should be reexamined as rich sources of information about families, households, and, most importantly, the language used by ordinary people to describe mental states.en_US
dc.identifier.citationColeborne, C. (2006). "His brain was wrong, his mind astray": Families and the language of insanity in New South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, 1880s-1910. Journal of Family History. 31(1), 45-65.en_US
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/0363199005283009en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10289/435
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherSage Publicationsen_NZ
dc.relation.isPartOfJournal of Family Historyen_NZ
dc.relation.urihttp://jfh.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/1/45en_US
dc.rightsThe final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal of Family History, 31(1), (2006), © SAGE Publications Ltd at the Journal of Family History page: http://jfh.sagepub.com/ on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/en_US
dc.subjectfamiliesen_US
dc.subjecthouseholdsen_US
dc.subjectinsanityen_US
dc.subjectclinical case notesen_US
dc.subjectlay descriptionsen_US
dc.subjectcolonialen_US
dc.title"His brain was wrong, his mind astray": Families and the language of insanity in New South Wales, Queensland, and New Zealand, 1880s-1910en_US
dc.typeJournal Articleen_US
pubs.begin-page45en_NZ
pubs.editionJanuaryen_NZ
pubs.elements-id31385
pubs.end-page65en_NZ
pubs.issue1en_NZ
pubs.volume31en_NZ
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