History of Medicine Section, Wednesday 30th Nov 2016

30/11/2016 in Geoffrey Bourke Room, First Floor, Setanta House, Setanta Place, Dublin 2.

Hearing Voices, Telling Stories: Writing the History of Psychiatry in Ireland 

Professor Brendan Kelly, Trinity College Dublin

Writing history is a complicated matter. This talk focuses on the research for, and writing of, ‘Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland.’  The book and talk encompass psychiatric developments from the Middle Ages to the present day, and examine the far-reaching social and political effects of Ireland’s troubled relationship with mental illness. From the ‘Glen of Lunatics’, said to cure the mentally ill, to the overcrowded asylums of later centuries – with more beds for the mentally ill than any other country in the world – Ireland has a complex, unsettled and utterly fascinating history in the practice of psychiatry. 

All Welcome, particularly students