Irish Insanity

Irish Insanity 1800-2000 charts and explains the rise and demise of asylums and mental hospitals in Ireland between 1800 and 2000. It definitively demonstrates that Ireland had the highest level of asylum usage internationally, arguing that a combination of social forces, rather than an 'epidemic of Irish insanity', underpinned this pattern of institutionalisation.

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The national public asylum system in Ireland was established during the early nineteenth century and continued to operate up to the close of the twentieth century. These asylums / mental hospitals were a significant physical and social feature of Irish communities. They were used intensively and provided a convenient form of institutional intervention to manage a host of social problems.

Irish Insanity identifies the long-term trends in institutional residency through the development of a detailed empirical data set, based on an analysis of original copies of the reports of Inspector of Asylums/Mental Hospitals in Ireland. Damien Brennan explores core social and historical features linked to this data including:



the political context
governance and social policy
the relationship between church and state
changing economic structures and social deprivation
professionalization
legislation and systems of admission and discharge
categorisation and diagnostic criteria
international developments
family dynamics

This book demonstrates that the actual rate of asylum utilisation in Ireland was the highest by international standards, but challenges the idea that an "epidemic of Irish insanity" actually existed. Offering a historical and sociological insight into an institutional legacy that is unusual within the international context, this book will be of particular relevance and interest to scholars within the fields of sociology, criminology, law, history, Irish studies, social policy, anthropology, nursing and medicine.