Though they had mostly all been closed by the turn of the century, the passing of the old Victorian asylums is still a matter of enduring controversy. First published almost thirty years ago, in this acclaimed book Peter Barham draws on examples from history, the contemporary mental health scene, and his own extensive research, to examine the changing fortunes of mental patients in the era of the asylum and beyond. Barham argues that an obsession with severe and enduring mental health problems should be a matter of urgent social obligation and concern. In a prologue to this new edition, he highlights the paradoxes, conflicts and ironies of the post-asylum landscape, notably the dramatic increase in the recourse to coercion and constraint in mental health care in the community, the rise of welfare minimalism and a culture of neglect, and the ambiguities of the much-vaunted ideology of ‘recovery’. Veteran survivor and campaigner Peter Campbell also contributes a preface in which he examines the passing of the asylums, and their after-life, in the light of his own