Thesis title: Communities, Experience, and Stigma: Mental Hospitals and Deinstitutionalisation in Greater Manchester 1959-1990
Supervisors: Professor Rob Ellis, Professor Rosamund Oates
This research will explore the experiences of deinstitutionalisation and the shift towards community care in Greater Manchester, looking at the impacts on the patients, the staff, and the communities. Although ideas surrounding community care (previously known as care in the community) had begun to appear much earlier, the Community Care Act of 1990 brought the final closures of mental hospitals across the United Kingdom. Greater Manchester and the northwest region have been largely overlooked in these histories, and this research will address this gap in the literature. In addition, I have hopes for developing some form of public history project from this research.