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Victorian literature is rife with scenes of madness, with mental disorder functioning as everything from a simple plot device to a commentary on the foundations of Victorian society. But while madness in Victorian fiction has been much studied, most scholarship has focused on the portrayal of madness in women; male mental disorder in the period has suffered comparative neglect. In ‘The Most Dreadful Visitation’, Valerie Pedlar redresses the balance. This extraordinary study explores a wide range of Victorian writings to consider the relationship between the portrayal of mental illness in literary works and the portrayal of similar disorders in the writings of doctors and psychologists. Pedlar presents in-depth studies of Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge, Tennyson’s Maud, Wilkie Collins’s Basil and Trollope’s He Knew He Was Right, considering each work in the context of Victorian understandings – and fears – of mental degeneracy.

victoriaans --- male --- madness --- mannen --- victorian --- gekte

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This open access book offers an exploration of delusions—unusual beliefs that can significantly disrupt people’s lives. Experts from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including lived experience, clinical psychiatry, philosophy, clinical psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, discuss how delusions emerge, why it is so difficult to give them up, what their effects are, how they are managed, and what we can do to reduce the stigma associated with them. Taken as a whole, the book proposes that there is continuity between delusions and everyday beliefs. It is essential reading for researchers working on delusions and mental health more generally, and will also appeal to anybody who wants to gain a better understanding of what happens when the way we experience and interpret the world is different from that of the people around us.

mental illness --- schizophrenia --- philosophy of madness --- madness and religion --- radical discontinuity --- imperfect cognitions --- clinical psychiatry --- clinical psychology --- cognitive neuroscience --- Anxiety disorders --- Belief formation --- Delusional beliefs --- Personality disorders --- Forms of Bias --- open access

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This open access book explores the history of asylums and their civilian patients during the First World War, focusing on the effects of wartime austerity and deprivation on the provision of care. While a substantial body of literature on ‘shell shock’ exists, this study uncovers the mental wellbeing of civilians during the war. It provides the first comprehensive account of wartime asylums in London, challenging the commonly held view that changes in psychiatric care for civilians post-war were linked mainly to soldiers’ experiences and treatment. Drawing extensively on archival and published sources, this book examines the impact of medical, scientific, political, cultural and social change on civilian asylums. It compares four asylums in London, each distinct in terms of their priorities and the diversity of their patients. Revealing the histories of the 100,000 civilian patients who were institutionalised during the First World War, this book offers new insights into decision-making and prioritisation of healthcare in times of austerity, and the myriad factors which inform this.

Social History --- History of Medicine --- History of Britain and Ireland --- Psychiatry --- Shell shock --- Soldiers --- Madness --- Welfare austerity --- Institutional care --- Hospitals --- Patient experiences --- Napsbury --- Colney Hatch --- Claybury --- Hanwell --- Standards of care --- Open Access --- Social & cultural history --- European history