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  • Open Minds

    Mental Health in Leeds

    ONLINE EXHIBITION

Part of a series of positive illustrations produced by Holly Lanforth and loaned to Leeds City Museum for the Open Minds display.

Introduction

Open Minds explores the experience of mental health and mental illness in Leeds.

It has been curated by the Preservative Party, Leeds City Museum’s volunteers aged 14-25, alongside members of the community. It is our voices you hear throughout the display. We believe mental health is a really important topic to talk about because it effects each and every one of us daily.

We want to say a massive thank you to everyone who has shared their story, and the organisations that helped us in the production of this exhibition. A special thanks to the Mental Health Museum in Wakefield for their support, advice and loaned items.

Please be aware that this display includes themes which may be upsetting. If you are affected by anything in this exhibition, please talk to someone.

Mental health and mental illness: a timeline

This timeline is a brief history of mental health from 1100s to 2020  including personal stories that people have shared.

Come along to the museum to see the full timeline.

  • 1100s

     

    Early asylums are established in Baghdad, Iraq, for people with ‘mental distress’.

  • 1300s

     

    The Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem in London is confiscated by Edward III and used for ‘lunatics’. It is the first known psychiatric hospital in Europe. The conditions are appalling.

  • 1500s

     

    Symptoms of mental illness are linked to witchcraft. Trephination is used as treatment for madness. A hole was drilled into the skull as it was believed this would let out evil spirits.

  • 1774

     

    The Madhouses Act regulates private ‘madhouses’ and requires them to be licenced and inspected.

  • 1796

     

    The York Retreat is founded by William Tuke. Following the treatment and death of Hannah Mills, the Quaker community developed the retreat as a response to the harsh conditions of asylums. Tuke pioneered humane treatment of the mentally ill, with moral treatment based on compassion, self-control, and respect. The building was designed to look like a house instead of a prison.

  • 1818

     

    The first West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum opens in Wakefield. Christopher Taylor is the first patient admitted to Wakefield Asylum. He previously worked as a milliner, also known as a hatter. Mercury was used in the production of hats, which often poisoned hatters and caused neurological damage. This is the origin of the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’.

  • 1834

     

    Poor Law Amendment Act changes the support for the poor by making relief available only to those in the workhouse. Workhouse conditions were intended to deter anyone from entering unless they were desperate. Many people who were struggling with their mental health and could not be cared for at home ended up in workhouses.

  • 1845

     

    The Lunacy Act and the County Asylums Act change the face of mental health law forever. For the first time people with mental illness receive the status of ‘patient’. The law also requires every asylum to employ a doctor.

  • 1888

     

    The West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Menston opens. Initially it takes patients from Wadsley Asylum, which is overcrowded. It has its own library, surgery, butchers, bakery, upholsterers, cobblers, farm, laundry, tailors and even a small railway system.

  • 1910

     

    In a letter to the Prime Minister, H.H. Asquith, Winston Churchill (then Home Secretary) favours confinement, segregation and sterilisation of ‘the feeble minded’.

  • 1914

     

    The outbreak of the First World War puts enormous pressure on medical
    facilities everywhere. Asylums in Yorkshire begin accepting ‘service
    patients’ who are suffering from shell shock.

  • 1930

     

    The Mental Treatment Act recommends the use of out-patient clinics and officially replaces the term ‘asylum’ with ‘mental hospital’.

  • 1939-1945

     

    World War Two puts further pressure on the world’s medical capacity and increases stress and trauma on people. In Nazi controlled Europe the Aktion T4 programme authorises the killing of people with physical disabilities and mental illnesses.

  • 1948

     

    The new National Health Service (NHS) makes healthcare, including mental healthcare, free at the point of delivery.

  • 1959

     

    The Mental Health Act defines ‘mental disorder’ for the first time and distinguishes it from learning disabilities. It also seeks to deinstitutionalise patients and develop community care.

  • 1970

     

    Bill from Leeds visits his GP as he suspects he is gay. The doctor arranges aversion therapy treatment for him at Lancaster Moor Hospital. He is shown slides of men whilst being given an electric shock. Bill gives up after a few weeks because he thinks it is ‘a total waste of time’. He moves back to Leeds and joins the Gay Liberation movement. Bill’s story was shared as part of the West Yorkshire Queer Stories project.

  • 1981

     

    Community Links is established in Leeds. Initially it is a project to support tenants of homeless hostels who feel unable to cope in the wider community. It becomes a charity and later expands its role to become an award winning non-profit provider of mental health and wellbeing services in Yorkshire and the Humber.

  • 1999

     

    The National Service Framework for Mental Health is launched. It describes the standards and guidelines for mental healthcare for the next ten years.

  • 2006

     

    Work begins to convert the High Royds Hospital buildings into apartments and houses.

  • 2010

     

    The Equality Act protects people from discrimination.

  • 2020

     

    Emergency changes are made to the Mental Health Act as a response to Coronavirus emergency. These temporarily affect the amount of time a patient can be remanded in hospital for, and the number of doctors required to detain a patient.

Objects and their stories

We have chosen a selection of key objects that feature as part of Open Minds. These items represent the different ways in which we have come to understand and treat mental health and mental illness across different decades, from the early 20th Century to 2020.

Hydrotherapy Bath

Hydrotherapy was used to treat a variety of mental illnesses in the early 20th Century. Patients were placed in a bath, and a wooden or fabric cover was used to stop them from getting out. The bath temperature was dictated by the staff depending on the patient’s diagnosis.

Stanley Royd in Wakefield used hydrotherapy, and the Mental Health Museum in Wakefield are loaning Open Minds one of the baths used there. As part of this exhibition we spoke to local photographer Bob Clayden who worked as a plumber at an asylum. He spoke about the stories he was told about the baths ‘boiling and freezing patients in cycles’. He also told us that visitors at Stanley Royd reported they could hear drumming. It was patients beating the wooden top of the baths.

The Hydrotherapy bath used at Stanley Royd. On loan from the Mental Health Museum, Wakefield. Photo courtesy Bob Clayden.

The Hydrotherapy bath used at Stanley Royd. On loan from the Mental Health Museum, Wakefield. Photo courtesy Bob Clayden.

Electroconvulsive Therapy Machine

In 1938 Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) was developed by Italian neurologist Ugo Carletti, who was convinced that induced convulsions were useful for treating schizophrenia. It was first used in the UK in 1939 and quickly becomes a popular treatment for a wide variety of mental illnesses.

This Siemens Konvulsator 2077 was used at Stanley Royd Hospital and includes sensors and a mouth guard.

Electroconvulsive Therapy machine on loan from Mental Health Museum in Wakefield.

Electroconvulsive Therapy equipment including a mouth guard and sensors. Image courtesy Mental Health Museum in Wakefield.

Chest Binder

Chest Binders are compression shirts that give the wearer the illusion of a flatter chest in order to appear more masculine. Chest binders can help alleviate gender dysphoria (when a person experiences distress because there’s a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity), which some Trans and Non-binary people experience.

Binders are to be worn for a recommended time of 8 hours and a maximum of 10 hours.

DO NOT EXERCIZE IN A BINDER

DO NOT SWIM IN A NON SWIMMING BINDER

DO NOT SLEEP IN YOUR BINDER

A chest binder

West Yorkshire Police sketches from trauma support resource

When we experience a traumatic event, our bodies react and create a stress response which makes us feel a number of different symptoms. Whilst our responses to trauma usually only last a few minutes or hours, in some situations these feelings of shock and fear can last for much longer or be retriggered.

These drawings were produced by West Yorkshire Police Occupational Health Team to support members of staff who have been involved in traumatic incidents at work.

A series of cartoons from trauma support resource. On loan from West Yorkshire Police Occupational Health Department

Support group posters and leaflets

Charities such as Andy’s Man Club provide people with a safe place to talk about how they feel. Ex-Leeds Rhinos player Luke Amber created Andy’s Man Club in 2016 after losing his brother in law, Andy Roberts, to suicide. It encourages talking groups for men over 18.

A selection of posters from local organisations illustrating the importance of talking to promote positive mental health.

Barbie Dolls

There is pressure from society to look a certain way. Our ideals of beauty feature in everything from fashion and art, to media and toys.

The first Barbie doll was released in 1959 in America. Sindy, made by British company Pedigree Dolls and Toys, followed in 1963. Sindy and Barbie (along with the male Ken doll) have been criticised for promoting an unhealthy and impossible body image. Barbie now includes the ‘Fashionistas’ range, which features a more diverse range of dolls.

Two Barbie dolls from the ‘Fashionista’ range. One has vitiligo, dark curly hair and is wearing a colourful striped dress, white high top trainers and a bumbag. The other Barbie doll has a prosthetic leg, wearing a dress with ruffled sleeves and striped pattern with white shoes and silvery hooped earrings. The doll has long brunette hair is styled in a partial updo.

Films

The Preservative Party worked with DigiFish to produce animations to accompany the Open Minds display.
TW: these animations address body image and isolation under the wider theme of mental health, which some viewers may find triggering.

Body Image

Body Image is a theme of the Open Minds display. Both animations explore isolation, but this animation looks at how isolated you can feel when you are struggling with your body image.

Isolation

During lockdown we discussed the impact of isolation on all of us. The Preservative Party decided to produce an animation which would explore isolation experiences, and how these can affect us all, regardless of the physical constraints of lockdown. We gathered several anonymous isolation stories and voiced these ourselves, from the comfort of our own isolated lockdown locations.

Positive Illustrations

As people have understood and observed more about mental health, treatment has changed and evolved. The Treatment display in Open Minds explores some of the diverse treatments used over the last hundred years. In recent years talking or art therapies have become increasingly popular.

‘I have done some illustrations with positive messages for mental health as I have been reflecting on how we can have an inner critic in our minds and sometimes we all need reminders that we have worth and value and no matter what happened in the past, we deserve mercy and forgiveness.’ Holly Lanforth.

The Preservative Party

Find out more about the Preservative Party, Leeds City Museum’s young volunteers aged 14-24 in our blog on youth engagement in museums.
Read about our experience curating and producing this exhibition over on our blog.

Copyright © Leeds City Council 2021