This thesis examines the development of mental health activism in the women’s movement in England from the establishment of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in 1968 until the end of the first nationwide charity campaign to focus on women and mental health, MIND’s Stress on Women, in 1994. Constructing in-depth case studies, this thesis assesses the assumption in the late 1960s and early 1970s that consciousness-raising facilitated women’s positive mental health, examines the formation of the London Women’s Liberation Workshop Psychology Group, traces the development of the Women’s Therapy Centre in London, and explores how the mental health charity MIND increasingly utilised and popularised women’s movement ideas and approaches across the 1980s and 1990s. In doing so, it explores how women’s movement mental health activists increasingly aligned feminist critiques of psychiatry and psychology, with the positive promotion of psychotherapy. Existing accounts of women’s movement mental health activism focus on the rejection of psychology and psychotherapy by its members. This thesis highlights how women’s movement members established community-based organisations and grassroots self-help groups to bolster their understandings of themselves and their political affiliations, and to support women experiencing mental health concerns and emotional distress. It therefore produces a more expansive understanding of the development of the personal politics integral to the women’s movement, challenges the popular narrative that women’s movement organisations became depoliticised in the 1980s, and documents the previously unexplored contribution of the women’s movement to the development of radical therapy networks and community-based mental health care in late twentieth-century England.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:742200 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Mahoney, Kate |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/101300/ |
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