Victorian society witnessed a transformation in the understanding and treatment of psychological disorders. The expansion of nosologies or classifications of lunacy was one measure hailed by psychological physicians as indicative of their mastery over madness. Yet between the 1840s and the 1870s the introduction of moral insanity and monomania to established classificatory systems undercut the medical authority of physicians and challenged their desired cultural stature as benevolent and authoritative agents of cure. Far from consolidating medical authority, these `partial' forms of lunacy (which were detected in the emotions rather than the intellect) paradoxically heightened anxiety about the ease with which eccentric or sane individuals could be wrongfully incarcerated in lunatic asylums. This dissertation examines the themes, motifs and defining issues of wrongful incarceration as they were discussed in Parliament, national and regional newspapers, medical and literary journals, and novels and short stories. Discussing in detail several infamous `cases' of wrongful confinement, it traces the ways in which anxieties were formulated, expressed and negotiated. The public outcry over cultural representations of wrongful confinement generated heated reactions from physicians and lunacy law reformers. The most contentious discussions centred on the manner in which notions of humanity and benevolence, and tyranny and liberty, were marshalled to influence public opinion. These debates represented not solely a legal conflict centring the claim to treatment and authority over the alleged lunatic, but more dramatically a battle for the public's good opinion. As important as medico-legal trials and their consequent rulings was the contested appropriateness of sentiment; this was manifested in words and images utilised to exacerbate or contain anxiety. The wrongful confinement controversy constitutes an important (though largely overlooked) episode in the history of English nineteenth-century psychiatry; formatively altering perceptions of the profession of mental science in the Victorian period.

The new Government of India did not introduce legislation for `native' lunacy in colonial India as a measure of social control after the uprisings of 1857-8; discussions about Indian insanes had already occurred in 1856, following asylum and pauper reform in Victorian England. With the 1858 Lunacy Acts, native lunatic asylums occupied an unsteady position between judicial and medical branches of this government. British officers were too constrained by their inexperience of asylums and of India to be effective superintendents and impose a coherent psychiatry within. They relied on their subordinate staff who were recruited from the communities that surrounded each asylum. Alongside staff and patients, the asylums were populated by tea sellers, local visitors, janitors, cooks and holy men, all of whom presented alternate and complementary ideas about the treatment and care of Indian insanes. By 1912, these asylums had been transformed into archetypal colonial institutions, strict with psychiatric doctrine and filled with Western-trained Indian doctors who entertained no alternate belief systems in these colonial spaces. How did these fluid and heterogeneous spaces become the archetypes of colonial power? / History of Science

Sierra Leone is a low-income country where 7.3% of its expenditure comes from the state and the rest is from charity and private expenditure, and therefore there is no official budget for mental health. Although many postcolonial countries have ratified international laws, many still have colonial discriminatory laws like ‘Lunacy Acts’ as national law, one of these countries are Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone has ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights but hasn’t abolished ‘The Lunacy Act’ from 1902. ‘The Lunacy Act’ is a law against individuals with suspected mental health illnesses, therefore the focus of this thesis is mental health in Sierra Leone.  Scholars believe that part of Sierra Leone's issues are due to Sierra Leone's colonial history. For that reason, this thesis has a postcolonial outlook for a deeper understanding of why 'The Lunacy Act' remains in a postcolonial Sierra Leone. To achieve that goal, a meticulous qualitative text analysis is needed. A comparison with ‘A postcolonial critique of Mental health’ will be made to help dissect the true postcolonial meaning of ‘The Lunacy Act’. Although the formal colonization is over, the ideological ones remain. This is noticeable through, for example, science. Western imperialism is not felt through physical colonialism such as borders and people, but also within cultural and political hegemony. An example of this is 'The Lunacy Act'.   The negative view of mental illness in postcolonial Sierra Leone persists due to the cultural hegemony. It is stronger than the political hegemony partly because the Sierra Leonean cultural hegemony cooperates with the thought system of Western psychiatry, meaning that the global south is more prone to mental illness, according to the colonial racialized system. In other words, "The Lunacy Act" is partly a tool of Western psychiatry and capitalism and that is why it has not been abolished in postcolonial Sierra Leone.