Project Statement

By the mid-1960s, 0.7% of the Irish population were held in psychiatric hospitals. Ireland remains the country with the highest number of patients in psychiatric hospitals per capita at any one time in world history.

These institutions had a profoundly labyrinthine ability for loss and neglect, meaning that many patients spent far too long in inappropriate conditions.

The walls of a psychiatric hospital carved out a self-sufficient ‘otherworld’, this being the primary method of treatment. Cast on these walls is the experience of the thousands of people who passed through or, all too commonly, within these institutions.

Now that they’re gone, these histories face a new form of confinement in archives. My work is firmly based and justified through this archival and written research, translating the emotionality of the history of Irelands everyday.

The large-scale institutions of Ireland’s past are gone, but the effects can still be felt.

Goal

It is my hope that my print and continued sculptural ceramic work will make this massive part of Irish social history more accessible. For far too long, thousands of people were held behind bolted doors in inappropriate conditions. Thousands of people were cut away from society, danced around in conversation regarding reform and kept as open secrets.

And now that they’re gone, this history has found a new form of confinement, in the form of books, research papers and theses. Things that most of the general public will not happen upon or connect with in the same way that artwork is capable of.

I hope that this project helps drop the barrier between contemporary conversations and how we see our history.

If you are here, you've already started!

FAQs

Is there any relation between Irish psychiatric hospitals and mother and baby homes?

Unlike mother and baby homes, the church had no governing power over psychiatric hospitals. Like prisons and workhouses, psychiatric hospitals were government ran.

They do have a crossover in that they both speak to Irelands history of institutionilising its people.

Why was Ireland so biased towards institutionilising its citizens?

Unfortunately, this is a complex layered question.

A part of the reason is poor administrative power. Many patients records only included their initial admission and their death notice. Because of how overcrowded many of these hospitals became, the ability to monitor an individual patients progress became extremely weak. The possibility of a person becoming lost in the everyday routine was highly likely.

Another reason is that the primary treatment was the act of institutionilising itself. While Irelands psychiatric hospitals did participate in some infamous medical methods of treatments such as lobotomies, Insulin coma therapy and electro-shock therapy, these treatments didn't stick in the way that other countries like in the UK or the USA. If your primary method of treatment is tucking a person away, providing no reintegration skills or talk therapy, reentering the outside world becomes difficult. 

Some sociologists see a corelation in the climb in admission numbers in psychiatric hospital in the late 1800s and the famine. There is a theory that people who were in utero during famine times have a greater likelihood of experiencing mental health issues in adulthood. But this is just a theory.

How can I find out if any of my family were in these historic psychiatric hospitals?

I would recommend starting with asking older family members what they know. Most of these hospitals only closed in the early 2010s, so these histories are well within living memory.

Try to fill in the blanks in your family tree. Ask about the great uncle who 'went to America'. Ask about the great aunt who couldn't walk until she was 5.

If you do find someone and would like to know how to persue those records, the Royal Irish Academy held a seminar entitled 'Grangegorman and Genealogy: Searching for Patients Voice'. While it is specifically about Grangegorman archives, it provides a great introduction.

Each hospital had its own records, some kept better than others. I would reccomend looking up the hospital and seeing if there are any ongoing research projects about them.

Was there any contrast between the amount of women and men in these institutions?

It was a pretty consistently even split between men and women in the patient population.