Mental Health in Childhood (360G-Wellcome-205858_Z_16_Z)

This project will draw on archives from The Children’s Society (‘Unexplored Riches in Medical History’), funded by the Wellcome Trust, with a focus on narratives around mental health in their earliest children's case files from the 1880s-1920s.The aim of this project is to create the basis for a more textured understanding of the origins of perceptions around mental health underlying much subsequent child welfare support, and inform practice and further research to improve outcomes. The term ‘mental health’ was popularised in the early 1900s by physicians and social reformers. Over a century later, mental health and wellbeing in childhood are recurrent themes in the media and on government agendas, with evidence that still more needs to be done on this front. This project has three objectives, namely 1. to analyse conceptual data around mental health in historical children's case files (N=100 from the 30,000 children's case files in the collection); 2. to trace historical, psychological and political developments around 'multi-agency work' and interventions; 3. to compare this with current developments and research regarding mental health in childhood, and my own data from interviews with children in schools, careleavers, professional workers and parents (N=80) to see what lessons can be learnt.