DP240100640 ‘Life outside institutions: histories of mental health aftercare 1900 to 1960’ (2024-2026)
About our project
We set out to look for evidence of the people who left mental hospitals in the period from 1900 to 1960 to help expand our knowledge of mental health care in the community before new ideas about ‘community psychiatry’ took hold from the 1960s and 1970s. This period of time, the first half of the twentieth century, has not been studied in as much detail. Historians interested in psychiatric confinement and institutional stories are not able to gain access to sensitive archival records after about 1920 due to privacy laws. As institutions and medical experts began to experiment with voluntary admission and increasing attention on destigmatising psychiatric confinement, they turned to different mechanisms to allow people more time in the community and outside institutions.
Aftercare was one aspect of this movement away from long-term institutional confinement, although many people did not have the opportunity to be discharged from mental hospitals because they were either deemed too unwell, or had no one to advocate for their release.
We decided to look for separate groups within the population of people discharged from institutions: adult women as carers; adult men and women as workers; adult women and men who were migrants; and returned servicemen. Our hope was to identify the different social and cultural aspects of leaving mental hospitals that shaped different demographic groups.
Our project also examines the network of aftercare provision across Australia by looking at the connections between New South Wales, Western Australia and Victorian organisations and personalities who shared a common goal to offer support to people leaving institutions in this period.
An important theme in this project is the rise of the hostel and rest home as an alternative accommodation for people seeking care in the community.
Many people employed those who left psychiatric institutions. The acts of professional and personal kindness we have found in the many archival records shows us that the focus on the rehabilitation of people who needed to grow their confidence back in the community was a marker of their success and positive adjustment. However, this theme of finding work, retaining work and regaining economic security was a particular aspect of the twentieth century identity of mental health aftercare at a time when people leaving institutions expressed a willingness and desire to work and to be part of the labour force.
When it became clear that the Second World War would cause a larger number of men to return with psychological wounds than the First World War, aftercare organisations began diversifying by providing more services to men. The Mental Health Auxiliaries of Victoria opened Trelowarren Rehabilitation Base in 1949, which was co-run by a group of men associated with the Returned Sailors’, Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Imperial League of Australia (RSSAILA). The Red Cross Society established the Rockingham Convalescent Home in 1940, which in 1958 was renamed ‘Rockingham’ by its residents, who objected to any suggestion that they were ‘passive’ and who wanted to take charge of their recovery and care. Homes or hostels such as these ones were able to provide care to men who were unable to access state-led services.
Stories of aftercare would not be possible without the women who took the first steps towards providing services to formerly institutionalised Australians who wanted to reintegrate into their communities. Emily Paterson founded the Aftercare Association of NSW in 1907 after recognising a need for such support while visiting women in Gladesville Mental Hospital for the Insane. In Perth, Susan Casson established the Mental Hospital Aftercare & Comforts Association that helped people moving from hospital to the community through visits or material support such as rent, clothing, furniture or medical expenses. Edith Pardy, who in 1930 became a foundation member of the Victoria Council for Mental Hygiene, founded the Mental Health Auxiliaries of Victoria in 1933. This organisation, based in Melbourne, initially provided newspapers and reading material to institutionalised people, but soon expanded across the state and from 1936, began providing post-institutional care. Women’s experiences through running such organisations were valuable and used by medical authorities who began moving towards community mental health care in the 1960s, meaning that we are able to show that the processes of deinstitutionalisation in Australia were informed by women’s initiative and knowledge.
If you want to know more
Godden, Judith, “‘A Joy Beyond Any Earthly Pleasure’: Emily Paterson’s Contribution to Community Mental Health.” Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 207, no. 2 (2021): 156–78.
Godden, Judith. Aftercare: Our Journey, 1907-2017. Sydney: Aftercare, 2017.
Pattison, Cate. The History of the Casson Family and Casson Homes in Western Australia 1897-2017. Commissioned for Casson Homes, 2017.
Robson, Belinda. “‘He Made Us Feel Special’: Eric Cunningham Dax, Edith Pardy and the Reform of Mental Health Services in Victoria, 1950s and 1960s.” Australian Historical Studies 34, no. 122 (April 2, 2003): 270–89.
Research publications
This project will produce a co-written book tentatively titled Between Hospital and Home. We will also produce an international co-edited book. We will each publish peer-reviewed journal articles, currently in progress, including for a Special Issue of History of Psychiatry.
We have presented international conference papers in Scotland, Germany and the United Kingdom. Professor Coleborne and Dr Karageorgos delivered papers at the 2024 Society for the Social History of Medicine conference held at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. At the 2025 European Association of the History of Medicine and Health conference held at Humboldt University, Berlin, we led a panel entitled ‘Mental health to Deinstitutionalisation’ which included Professor Catharine Coleborne and Dr Effie Karageorgos, as well as two members of our International Expert Group, Professors Rob Ellis and Hans Pols. In July 2026, we will present our work at the ‘Migration and Mental Health: New Ways of Seeing the Past, New Ways of Engaging with the Present’ workshop and ‘Life Histories in Mind’ conference at Manchester Metropolitan University, hosted by Professor Rob Ellis.
We were invited to present our project findings to the Stride NSW Board in 2024 and 2025.
International Expert Group
Our research about Australian aftercare is part of a wider body of international research moving away from a focus on the institution. To ensure that Australian stories are platformed, we have formed an International Expert Group (IEG) to facilitate the sharing of such stories in a global context. Since 2024, the IEG has provided feedback about project directions, and in August 2026 a group of IEG members will travel to the University of Newcastle for the ‘Aftercare to deinstitutionalisation: Post-institutional mental health care in international context’ symposium, led by Effie Karageorgos and have been invited to contribute chapters to the associated book co-edited by Professor Coleborne and Dr Karageorgos. Members of the IEG include Professor Rob Ellis, Professor David Wright, Professor Akihito Suzuki, Professor Hans Pols, Professor Matthew Smith, Professor Catherine Cox, Associate Professor Clare Edington and Dr Vicky Long.
Life Outside Institutions 