1,721,049 research outputs found
Health geography in New Zealand and Australia: global integration or Antipodean exceptionalism?
No full textThis paper examines the hallmarks of an emergent and distinctive Australian and New Zealand (NZ) heath geography over the last 30 years. Building on an assessment of the early development of the sub-discipline in the two countries, a review of published work reveals the co-presence of local themes alongside connections to more global perspectives associated notably with health behaviour. Further common themes are the influence of year-round exposure to outdoor spaces and the proximity of “blue spaces” to urban centres. However, there are divergences in the evolution of the sub-discipline. A comparison of attendance at the biennial International Medical Geography Symposia (held since 1985) with publications in the journal Health & Place reveal differentially globalised characters. A steady flow of international visitors and appointments to New Zealand universities as well as more apparent connections to the wider discipline of geography contrast with more applied geo-spatial and public health connections in Australian health geography
Selling the private asylum: therapeutic landscapes and the (re)valorization of confinement in the era of community care
No full textThis paper examines the role of place in the positioning and survival of the contemporary private asylum. While community care is now the dominant mental health care modality in most Western health economies, some asylum care has survived, often in the private sector, catering for a clientele able and willing to pay for a non-standard approach to care. We consider how landscapes, buildings and services provide a basis for marketing and selling asylum care. Drawing on fieldwork, documentary analysis and visual evidence, we analyse the representational strategies of the Homewood Health Centre Inc. (Ontario, Canada), the Ashburn Private Psychiatric Clinic (Dunedin, New Zealand) and the acute psychiatric hospitals within the Priory Group (UK). The paper draws conclusions about the role of therapeutic landscapes in the contemporary asylum, place marketing and the (re)valorization of historical ideas of asylum
Traces of the New Zealand psychiatric hospital: unpacking the place of stigma
No full textWe surveyed the status of former public psychiatric hospitals, asking what has happened to the land and buildings. Drawing on Anderson’s notion of traces, we argued for the transcendent role of stigma in closure processes and in subsequent reuse. We examined the extent to which evidence of mental health care remains at former hospital sites and developed a fivefold classification of end uses – retained health care; trans-institutionalisation (to new institutional uses); residential; commercial; and dereliction. We concluded that while stigma is pervasive in shaping traces of the psychiatric hospital, its effects are filtered by locality-specific factors including commercial potential
Re-imagining psychiatric asylum spaces through residential redevelopment: strategic forgetting and selective remembrance
No full textThe closure of psychiatric asylums across the western world has brought significant amounts of ‘brown field’ land onto the market over the past few decades. Situated on the edge (or former edge) of many cities, these sites have proven attractive for residential redevelopment. Drawing on two case studies from the UK and New Zealand, we consider the implications of such recycling in the built environment for the memory of the former use, asking how redevelopment addresses the stigmatised past of the asylum. We discuss issues associated with the ‘re-imagining’ of heritage buildings and landscapes and examine the extent to which the past is strategically forgotten or selectively remembered in the repackaging of the asylum as housing. We conclude that while stigma continues to cast a shadow over reuse of former asylum spaces, in both case studies impacts seem to dissipate over time. In the UK, this dissipation appears to be enhanced by the presence of policies that cast redevelopment for housing as a source of funding for heritage conservation
The afterlives of the psychiatric asylum: the recycling of concepts, sites and memories
No full textThe last 40 years has seen a significant shift from state commitment to asylum-based mental health care to a mixed economy of care in a variety of locations. In the wake of this deinstitutionalisation, attention to date has focussed on users and providers of care. The consequences for the idea and fabric of the psychiatric asylum have remained 'stones unturned'. This book address an enduring yet under-examined question: what has become of the asylum?Focussing on the 'recycling' of both the idea of the psychiatric asylum and its sites, buildings and landscapes, this book makes theoretical connections to current trends in mental health care and to ideas in cultural/urban geography. The process of closing asylums and how asylums have survived in specific contexts and markets is assessed and consideration given to the enduring attraction of asylum and its repackaging as well as to retained mental health uses on former asylum sites, new uses on former sites, and interpretations of the derelict psychiatric asylum. The key questions examined are the challenges posed in seeking new uses for former asylums, the extent to which re-use can transcend stigma yet sustain memory and how location is critical in shaping the future of asylum and asylum site
From medical to health geography: novelty, place and theory after a decade of change
No full textIn this paper, we reflect on the positioning of health geography within the wider
academic landscapes of geography and health-related research. Drawing on examples from a
number of countries, we consider the extent to which a ‘new geography of health’ has emerged
in recent years. We structure our discussion around the themes of place, theoretical engagement
and critical relevancy. Changes within the subdiscipline are placed in the context of a central
question: what is new about the new geography of health
Recycling former psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand: echoes of deinstitutionalisation and restructuring
No full textThis paper addresses a gap in the understanding of the geography of deinstitutionalisation: the fate of
closed asylums. We contend that the closure process was an exercise in both deinstitutionalisation and
welfare state restructuring, and examine discourses surrounding the re-use of two former psychiatric
hospitals in New Zealand—Seaview in Hokitika and Kingseat near Auckland. Drawing on an analysis of
media coverage and field observation, we consider former asylums as sites of celebrity. We find the
shadow of stigma to be prominent, manifested directly in suggestions that the former hospitals be used
as prisons and in the partial redevelopment of one as a ‘horror theme park’. Indirectly, we see stigma
reflected in the physical deterioration of the asylums prior to closure. While this stigmatising is
attributable in the first instance to deinstitutionalisation, the evidence suggests strongly that it was coopted
and exploited by the forces of restructuring
Memorialisation and remembrance: on strategic forgetting and the metamorphosis of psychiatric asylums into sites for tertiary educational provision
No full textThis paper builds on earlier investigations of psychiatric asylum closure by focusing on their not infrequent successor role as educational facilities. We ask two questions: what conditions underpin a transition to educational re-use, and how is former asylum use remembered and memorialised in the successor context? Through recounting and interpreting the histories of acquisition and adaptation at two sites (Carrington, Auckland and Lakeshore, Toronto), we build a narrative that suggests a variable response to the shadows cast by stigma and the vilification of asylum. We distinguish between memorialisation (material reminders on site) and remembrance (narratives of past use). Former asylum sites, we contend, are attractive for educational users for their campus-like settings, range of buildings and (now) suburban locations. For city residents and planners replacing one institutional use with another keeps the site green, brings employment, and retains semi-public access. Memorialisation is often strategically low-key and remembrance more personal and individual. The net result is a relict landscape that speaks to the transcendence of stigma despite the relatively recent demise of the asylum. <br/
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