From colonial rivalries to a national mental health strategy

Historical development of mental health services in Australia

This history is entwined with the impact of European (British) invasion and settlement, initially in 1788, to form penal colonies to alleviate the overcrowding of English jails. As European settlement in Australia expanded, the colonisers tried to come to terms with this remote vast landscape, and fought with the original Aboriginal inhabitants over land and resources. This resulted in fear and isolation for Europeans, and widespread, deadly epidemics and determined attempts at extermination, seriously endangering the indigenous peoples. People of European stock were, therefore, seen as vulnerable to ‘bush madness’, ‘moral insanity’, ‘sunstroke’ and ‘intemperance’, the latter being due to binge drinking and adulterated alcohol. Aboriginal peoples have been subjected to dispossession and ‘spirit-breaking’: largely undocumented emotional traumas through massacres, forced removal from their parents (‘the lost generations’), traditional lands, culture and language, amounting to genocide (Rosen, 1994,Wilson, 1997).

Initially, people with mental illness were confined in irons on ships and in jails alongside troublesome convicts. It was some years before the first suicide was recorded: ‘When life is cheap suicide is rare’ (Dax, 1989). No separate provision was made until 1811, with the first small institution for the ‘insane' opening in Castle Hill, New South Wales, (NSW) accommodating 20 people. Two small asylums were opened in Van Dieman's Land, now Tasmania,in 1824.The first large asylum at Tarban Creek, NSW,was opened in 1838 (later named Gladesville Hospital, which finally ceased operating as an in-patient psychiatric facility in 1997).