Meet these radicals and reconsider who could be in charge of the fate of mental health. Vancouver’s pioneering group MPA was Canada’ first democratic, peer-directed mental health organization. It inverted asylum hierarchies and put former patients and sympathetic lay supporters in charge. This exhibit includes a series of biographical sketches and case studies.
Read what the practitioners have to say about their struggles to redefine themselves in a deinstitutionalized world. As the big psychiatric institutions closed in the 1960s and 1970s, many of the staff found work in community mental health programs. Historian Chris Dooley presents the stories of front-line prairie mental health workers and his own reflections.
Established in the deinstitutionalizaton era, White Cross Centres were meant to help discharged patients build a social life and gain skills for daily living. This exhibit is a compelling illustration of the inadequacies of an underfunded and underdeveloped community mental health system.
Were people in long-stay psychiatric institutions really shut off from the world? The life of Marguerite-Marie, resident of Montreal’s Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Hospital from age 12, shows that this was not always the case. Family letters provide a glimpse into Marguerite-Marie’s daily activities, her dreams and desires for her life outside of the asylum, and the maintenance and nurturing of familial ties.
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum is a 36-minute historical documentary about the MPA (Mental Patients Association), Vancouver’s most radical and successful mental health group. A compilation of interviews clips, animation, vintage footage, and original music, this provocative, passionate and engaging film speaks to social justice, community-building and mental health today.
