Yale University Library Research Guides: ER&M 332: Cultural and Racial History of Mental Health: Primary Sources beyond Yale

Posters and Prints in the National Library of Medicine

Front of World Mental Health Day postcard

The National Library of Medicine has over 70,000 historical images in its collection, including many on diseases.

Free, big databases for downloadable primary sources

Turn to these free online primary sources:
Medical Heritage Library
A consortium of medical libraries, including Yale, have put parts of their collections available online. Over 300,000 freely downloadable primary source books, many from 1780-1923. On the Medical Heritage Library website, under the Content tab, you can find American and State medical society journals.

National Library of Medicine (NLM) Historical Collections
Great primary history of medicine material, including digitized books, images, archives, and moving images (aka movies). Includes the Health Policy and Services Research collection, with reports on health policy.

Internet Archive
Home to a huge variety of resources, including Moving Pictures, for free use. Not limited to history of medicine or urban health, but lots of possible primary sources here. Make sure, if you pick a source from here, that it's uploaded by a library or other institution! You can find movies like Right to Health: Neighborhood Health Centers in Profile, A (1969).

-ALSO look at the Office of Minority Health Resource Center's digitized books on various race related health topics.

Hathi Trust
A huge online repository of freely downloadable books and journals, from a collaboration of libraries including Yale. Not limited to history of medicine or urban health, but lots of possible primary sources here.

Digital Public Library of America
This site pulls in sources and archives (like letters and diaries) from many libraries, museums, and other institutions, as well as big databases like Hathi Trust and Internet Archive. Look at the primary sources sets and exhibitions on broad themes, including race.

Social Welfare History Library
Research materials related to this history include the papers, records and publications of individuals, local volunteer groups, national private organizations, and the state and federal government agencies that have provided and regulated social services. Charity groups and social welfare organizations often work on behalf of people whose voices have not been heard widely in American history. Therefore, the archives of social welfare history serve as a resource for learning more about women, children, minorities, immigrant and refugees, the elderly, the poor and persons with disabilities.

The Grey Literature Report
This database is a comprehensive collection of urban health resources produced by The New York Academy of Medicine between 1999 and 2016. The materials in the Greylit Report database include health and science policy, public health, health of vulnerable and special populations (i.e. children, women, uninsured, elderly) and those areas of general medicine and disease in which the Academy has research interests.

PubMed
PubMed is a huge medical database comprising more than 30 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. PubMed Central is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. This includes titles like the Journal for the National Medical Association, which is the major organization representing "interests of physicians and patients of African descent," and the Journal of Urban Health (1998-present). Anything before 1998 is the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine.

Topical primary source sites

This is a selected list of sites related to topics on race and mental health. This is by no means everything!

The Historic Hospital Admission Registers Project (HHARP)
Provides access to 140,213 admission records to four British children’s hospitals: three in London, the Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Evelina and the Alexandra Hip Hospital for Children, and one from Scotland, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow. Between them the databases cover a period from 1852 to 1921.
Honoring the Dead: A Digital Archive of the Insane Indian Asylum
Provides some digitized documents related to the Asylum for Insane Indians located in Canton, South Dakota from 1903 to 1934
Medical History of British India
From the National Library of Scotland. The link takes you to records of the lunatic asylums of Punjab, India.
The National Archives (UK) guide on Asylums, Psychiatric Hospitals and Mental Health
This is a guide to records of lunatic asylums, their inmates and other records relating to mental health, primarily from the 19th century, held at The National Archives. Includes links to patient records for some of the asylums
Project LETS
"Project LETS is a national grassroots organization and movement led by and for folks with lived experience of mental illness/madness, Disability, trauma, & neurodivergence." They created a robust resource page on race and mental health with guides and graphics.
Substance Abuse & Mental Health Data Archive
Under the publications tab, includes the SAMHSA bibliography, a compendium of English-language, peer-reviewed journal articles from original research that utilized SAMHSA data. The bibliography is updated quarterly through an extensive literature review. The bibliography provides insight into how SAMHSA data is actively shaping and informing the field of mental health and substance use, back to 1975.
The Cushing Memorial Library Collection of Asylum Reports, University of Akron
The Cushing Memorial Library Collection of Asylum Reports is the largest multi-region collection of institutional reports held at a single public repository in the United States. It includes reports from psychiatric institutions - “asylums” - representing 33 of the United States and dating back as early as 1830s. These reports contain financial records, floor plans, patient statistics, and day-to-day details from asylums throughout the nation. They provide information on the historic classifications of diseases and their treatment, from melancholia to depression and dementia praecox to schizophrenia. They are a vital resource for scholars of institutional care throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, as well as for anyone with an interest in the history of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine, as well as American and social histories. It represents a key era of psychological care in the U.S. when institutionalization was the primary method of formalized mental health care. Find other psychology collections at https://collections.uakron.edu/.

Websites with news, book reviews, and announcements

Consortium for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The Consortium brings together educational, cultural and research institutions to promote the history of science, technology, and medicine. The website has a huge collection search, podcasts and presentations, and working groups.
Decolonising madness?
This project explores the historical origins and development of the concept of ‘global psyche’ and transcultural psychiatry. It relies on a variety of psychiatric writings, patient case files, oral interviews and institutional and governmental documents, and combines historical, anthropological and psychiatric/epidemiological perspectives, to uncover the birth of post-colonial global psychiatry.
H-Madness
H-Madness is intended as a resource for scholars interested in the history of madness, mental illness and their treatment (including the history of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and clinical psychology and social work). The site includes book reviews, blog posts, and other information
A History of Disability: from 1050 to the Present Day
This site explores disability across the centuries, focused on the built environment.
Mad in America: Science, Psychiatry and Social Justice
Mad in America’s mission is to serve as a catalyst for rethinking psychiatric care in the United States (and abroad). The site includes editorials, podcasts, book reviews, and news.

ER&M 332: Cultural and Racial History of Mental Health: Primary Sources beyond Yale

Posters and Prints in the National Library of Medicine

Free, big databases for downloadable primary sources

Topical primary source sites

Websites with news, book reviews, and announcements

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