Preventing Male Mental Illness in Post-war Britain

Abstract

Writing in 1960, Alfred Torrie, consultant psychiatrist and former superintendent of the Retreat at York, observed that many books had been written about the problems of children and old people; however, little guidance was available to middle-aged men with personal problems. Having identified this lacuna in health advice literature, he noted that there were a number of reasons for such inattention: The middle-aged man is expected to have reached maturity; to be in the prime of life; to have passed the problems of adaptation to adulthood; to have become settled; to have become a husband and a father; and to be respected in the community as a leader, looked up to by his fellows. 1

The National Schizophrenia Fellowship: Charity, Caregiving and Strategies of Coping, 1960–1980

“…6 However, as Ali Haggett explains, 'during the 1960s, this situation began to change, heralded by the growth of post-war social surveys and the emergence of early patient advocacy groups, which demonstrated that patients wanted more information about health and disease.' 7 This emergence of early patient advocacy groups corresponds with the work of Dyck and Russell in Chapter 8 of this volume. Following on from their work however, this chapter suggests that it was not only the patients, but the families who wanted more information in the 1960s.…”