1st Edition

Psychiatry, Mental Institutions, and the Mad in Apartheid South Africa

By Tiffany Fawn Jones Copyright 2012
280 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

278 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

280 Pages 9 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

In the late 1970s, South African mental institutions were plagued with scandals about human rights abuse, and psychiatric practitioners were accused of being agents of the apartheid state. Between 1939 and 1994, some psychiatric practitioners supported the mandate of the racist and heteropatriarchal government and most mental patients were treated abysmally. However, unlike studies worldwide that... Read more

Introduction  1. Prospects of a Progressive Mental Health System in South Africa Before Apartheid: Tara Hospital and Psychobiology, c1939-1948  2. The "Disordered" State: Government Policies and Institutions for the Administration of the Mad During Apartheid, 1948-1973  3. Patient Accounts: Life in State Institutions and Challenging Exile, 1939-1961  4. Heinous Crimes: Community and Cross-Cultural Psychiatry, and State Mental Health Services for Non-Whites, 1948-1990  5. Controlling and Challenging Sexuality: Psychiatric Struggles over Homosexuality in the 1960s-1980s  6. "Monopoly on Madness?": Private Long-Term Mental Institutions in South Africa, 1963-1989  7. Critics Of The System?: The Church of Scientology and the International Vilification of Psychiatry in South Africa.  Conclusion

Biography

Tiffany Fawn Jones is an Assistant Professor of African History at California State University, San Bernardino, California. Her research interests lie in the intersection between ideas of health, race, gender, sexuality and power structures in Africa. She has published widely and is the book review editor for Notes and Records: an International Journal on Africa and the African Diaspora.