How MIND recast learning-disability citizenship
Toms argues that mentally deficient people became citizens after the war almost unnoticed, and that MIND's 1970s campaign only makes sense against NAMH's mental-hygiene origins from 1913/1946.
Source
Citizenship and Learning Disabled People: The Mental Health Charity MIND's 1970s Campaign in Historical Context
Study at a glance
- Design
- Qualitative / archival — Organisational/intellectual history of NAMH/MIND’s mental-hygiene origins and 1970s campaign
- N
- Charity and policy history from 1913/1946 through the 1970s; not a sample N
- Population
- National Association for Mental Health (later MIND) and people then labelled mentally handicapped
- Outcome
- Post-war unnoticed citizenship of learning-disabled people and the context of MIND’s 1970s campaign
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
An organisational and intellectual history of the National Association for Mental Health (NAMH, later MIND), reading mental-hygiene origins, the 1959 Mental Health Act's ambiguities, 1950s psychological experiments, and the 1970 national campaign for people then called mentally handicapped.
What they found
Eugenic mental-deficiency politics had cast these people as the antithesis of citizenship. After the war they ceased to be voiced as a social threat and became citizens, but few noticed. The Welfare State absorbed old services. 1950s psychology showed unrecognised learning but implied citizenship meant assimilating into the lowest work levels. In 1970 NAMH launched a major campaign; MIND also fought policy for this group, not only for mental illness.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is not an evaluation of today's learning-disability services, nor a claim that MIND invented citizenship. It does not measure outcomes of the 1970 campaign.
Key terms
- Mental hygiene movement
- Inter-war voluntary public-health tradition concerned with mental stability, deficiency, and social efficiency, from which NAMH/MIND grew.
- NAMH
- National Association for Mental Health, formed in 1946 from three voluntary bodies; later rebranded MIND.
- Antithesis of citizenship
- Eugenic framing of 'mental defectives' as innately deficient and socially inefficient, to be institutionalised.
- 1959 Mental Health Act
- Statute whose ambiguities about mental deficiency and citizenship Toms traces to the failure to rethink rights.
Flashcards
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
NAMH was formed in?
Common questions
What did post-war silence do?
Mentally deficient people ceased to be treated as a threat and became citizens, but few noticed.
When did NAMH plan a major campaign?
In 1970, to highlight institutional problems for people then called mentally handicapped.
What did 1950s psychology imply?
Many could learn routine tasks, but citizenship meant assimilating into the lowest work levels.
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