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This work investigates my family’s long-held secrets that concealed the whereabouts of my grandmother. After years of estrangement, my father discovered Ada living in a mental hospital. Memories are rarely straightforward and could only take us so far in understanding why Ada remained missing from our family for so long. My search for answers involved genealogical research and led me to access Ada’s mental patient files. This rich data source provided some troubling glimpses into Ada’s auditory hallucinations and grandiose delusions and her encounters with several mental institutions in Victoria, Australia, during the twentieth century. Critical family history approaches allow me to gain insights into the gendered power relations within her marriage and the power imbalance within families. The theme of migration is addressed through the lens of mobility when Ada relocated following her marriage and her movement between home on trial leave and several sites of care after her committal. Scholars have shown that the themes of migration and mobility are important and hold personal significance in exploring the connection between mental health and institutionalisation for our family. Here, I demonstrate how mental illness in families is stigmatised and concealed through institutionalisation and its legacy for younger generations.

In this article we evaluate micro-history as a method for investigating the meaning of stigma, shame and family secrets through generations. We present micro-histories of two Australian soldiers who developed mental illness years after serving in World War 1 and were committed to a psychiatric hospital where they died. Data were drawn from publicly available records and interviews with family members. The contrasting stories held by the families of each man illustrate the transmission of stigma and secrets through families. We explore possible reasons for the differences between the families related to the wider literature on stigma and mental health and show why the family stories people present should be considered social constructions rather than facts. We also address ethical issues that arose during the research, and which have relevance for researchers investigating sensitive or potentially stigmatising topics.