Appreciating the importance of history : a brief historical overview of mental health, mental health nursing and education in Australia

History is consistently acknowledged as crucial to the identity of a profession. In the case of mental health nursing this is perhaps more so, as published accounts of the history of nursing rarely pays attention to the specialty of mental health. The aim of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the history of mental health nursing in Australia. It is concluded that an understanding of history is essential in understanding and interpreting contemporary mental health service delivery and seeking to overcome the professional distance between mental health and other branches of nursing.