Mental health history – It matters

The history of mental health nursing has often been overshadowed by other histories. It has been overshadowed by nursing’s subservience to medical men who were quick to lay claim to the ownership of psychiatry as a science to gain respectability and a professional identity. It has been overshadowed by general nursing history which was able to celebrate heroines such as Florence Nightingale. Without such exalted heroines, mental health nursing has often been relegated as an appendage to general nursing, and its history, and given little value as part of the history of health care. It has also been overshadowed by a lack of motivation to hear its history given its association with the anxieties that society has had about mental illness and the negative mythology associated with lunatic asylums of the past. Yet, its history is rich and deserving of acknowledgement. Understanding mental health nursing history encourages a collective memory, helps to forge a professional bond and identity and a way forward out of past circumstances and old mentalities.