Dialogues on Mental Health Records

Abstract: The Dialogues on Mental Health Records project is a platform to address the challenges of managing historical public mental health records through a series of nationwide convenings. These convenings bring together people across regions, disciplines, and life experiences including archivists, historians, former patients, psychiatrists, and hospital administrators.

Historical public mental health records include administrative and patient records with identifiable health information about individuals from 50 years following their death. These records are crucial for our collective understanding of the historical impact of public institutions, but the records require careful management due to their sensitive nature.

Many state hospitals in the United States were established in the late 1800s and were often deeply connected to their local communities where people would live, work, and engage in recreational activities on the grounds. State hospitals were also at the center of many historical movements including segregation and desegregation, deinstitutionalization, and major medical breakthroughs. This complex social, medical, and political history is often flattened into ghost stories of haunted asylums, contributing to stigma against people who receive care in state hospitals. Sharing the history in a manner that is respectful to the patients, workers, and families can help counter this stigma.

This presentation will introduce the challenges of preserving and accessing these records, why there is a need for interdisciplinary national collaboration on the topic of state hospital historical preservation, what challenges and ethical concerns have been discussed in these meetings, and the current state of state hospital historical preservation.

Keywords: Mental Health, Public Health Institutions, History