Starting in 1911, and for many years, the Alberta Hospital Ponoka, or AHP, was the largest and highest-population psychiatric institution in the Western Canadian Province of Alberta. It was also located on the outskirts of Jack Martin's hometown, and his father was employed there, which means that its story and Martin's intersect in varied and interesting ways.In Hometown Asylum, Martin explores the Hospital's history, along with some of his own. In this journey, Martin considers past and contemporary issues in mental health services and treatments from the perspectives of those receiving them, those attempting to provide them, and the citizens whose attitudes and tax dollars inevitably guide and contribute to these efforts. In telling the history of the Alberta Hospital Ponoka, this book describes a wide and varied range of treatments for those suffering mental disorders, and examines how societies, past and present, have responded to the challenges of caring for them. As a part of this, Martin raises questions about the nature of mental illness, the efficacy and ethics of treatments offered, the rights of the mentally ill, and the obligations and manner of their care.
...MoreReview C. Elizabeth Koester (2022) Review of "Hometown Asylum: A History and Memoir of Institutional Care". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 105-106).
Similar Citations
Article
Boschma, Geertje;
(2008)
A Family Point of View: Negotiating Asylum Care in Alberta, 1905--1930
Book
Burnett, Kristin;
(2010)
Taking Medicine: Women's Healing Work and Colonial Contact in Southern Alberta, 1880--1930
Book
Steven J. Taylor;
Alice Brumby;
(2019)
Healthy Minds in the Twentieth Century: In and Beyond the Asylum
Book
Malacrida, Claudia;
(2015)
A Special Hell: Institutional Life in Alberta's Eugenic Years
Article
Olga Villasante;
(2020)
Malaria therapy in Spain: 100 years after its introduction as a treatment for the general paralysis of the insane
Article
Alison Watts;
(2021)
Experimental Treatments: Women, Gender, and ‘Maternal Insanity’ in Victorian Psychiatric Institutions, 1920–36
Article
Evans, Bonnie;
Jones, Edgar;
(2012)
Organ Extracts and the Development of Psychiatry: Hormonal Treatments at the Maudsley Hospital, 1923--1938
Article
Beyer, Christof;
(2012)
Eine Patientenperspektive in der Psychiatrie zwischen Krankheit, Normalisierung und Normalität (1921--1937)
Article
Lee, Bang Hyun;
(2013)
Modern Approach to Treating Mental Patients in Colonial Chosun
Article
Dany Nobus;
(2020)
The madness of Princess Alice: Sigmund Freud, Ernst Simmel and Alice of Battenberg at Kurhaus Schloß Tegel
Article
Motlatsi Thabane;
(2021)
Public mental health care in colonial Lesotho: themes emerging from archival material, 1918–35
Article
Hutchison, Iain;
(2011)
Institutionalization of Mentally-Impaired Children in Scotland, c.1855--1914
Article
Tatjana Buklijas;
(2017)
The laboratory and the asylum: Francis Walker Mott and the pathological laboratory at London County Council Lunatic Asylum, Claybury, Essex (1895–1916)
Book
Jane Freebody;
(2023)
Work and Occupation in French and English Mental Hospitals, c.1918-1939
Article
Wallis, Jennifer;
(2013)
The Bones of the Insane
Article
Kragh, Jesper Vaczy;
(2010)
Malaria Fever Therapy for General Paralysis of the Insane in Denmark
Book
Taylor, Steven J.;
(2009)
Acts of Conscience: World War II, Mental Institutions, and Religious Objectors
Thesis
Carpenter, D T;
(cited 2010)
Above All a Patient Should Never Be Terrified: An Examination of Mental Health Care and Treatment in Hampshire 1845--1914
Book
Stef Eastoe;
(2021)
Idiocy, Imbecility and Insanity in Victorian Society: Caterham Asylum, 1867–1911
Book
Liliosa Azara;
Luca Tedesco;
(2019)
La donna delinquente e la prostituta: L’eredità di Lombroso nella cultura e nella società italiane
Be the first to comment!