Welsh Journals

THE WELSH CONTRIBUTION TO MENTAL HEALTH LEGISLATION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY One need not be a pessimist to be sensible that the humane treatment of the insane may have its ebb as well as its flow Vigilance is, and always will be, required; for it to be allowed to slumber, we but too well know that there is only one direction in which things will be when left to themselves, and that is downhill. THROUGHOUT the ages, there have been many who have been unable to accept that the causes of mental disorder could be explained in terms of natural phenomena. Nor have more recent advances in treatment ensured that there necessarily follows a corresponding improvement in attitudes towards the mentally ill. Among the most important, and least studied, of the factors which help to mould public opinion in this sphere are changes in the law concerning the management of the psychiatrically disabled. It has been shown that until 1868, Welsh politicians had made virtually no impression on parliamentary affairs for several centuries.2 The sphere of mental health legislation provides an exception to that rule. By the 1760s, it had become more widely known that conditions in most of the private asylums were deplorable. Later, information concerning the severe psychiatric illness of George III was also made public, and so attention was drawn to the need for reforms in the care of the mentally ill. Several MPs from Wales, who had little in common, except that they represented Welsh constituencies, played a significant, if disjointed, role in this field during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus, the earliest changes 1 D. Hack Tuke, 'Presidential address Journal of Mental Science, XXVIII (1881-2), 339. 2 K. O. Morgan, 'The Welsh in English politics, 1868-1982', in R. R. Davies, R. A. Griffiths, I. G. Jones and K. O. Morgan (eds.), Welsh Society and Nationhood: Historical Essays Presented to Glanmor Williams (Cardiff, 1984), p. 234.