Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Women's and Gender Studies

Advisor

Dana-Ain Davis

Subject Categories

Social Justice | Women's History | Women's Studies

Keywords

Madness, women, Mental Health Act, United Kingdom, punishment

Abstract

Whilst experiences of madness are multiple, fluid and multi-dimensional across spiritual and collective dimensions globally, the categorization and regulation of ‘madness’ have direct foundations in European colonial-capitalist-patriarchal frameworks, policies and systems. This work focuses on the institutions and structures of power, turning UK legislation and those who are trying to reform or change it, into objects of study. A particular piece of United Kingdom legislation is the primary case study for this work – the Mental Health Act 1983 which covers the rights, assessment and treatment of people diagnosed with a ‘mental disorder’. Women, who are detained under this Act at a lower rate than men are often left out of both public discourse, policy and practice and yet face particularly gendered and racialized violence at the hands of the punitive British state. The focus on this Act is to expose how the tentacles of the law, have been developed, and how they have reformed, resisted and shaped women’s lives in both extraordinary and quotidian ways. This work will attempt to excavate herstories and histories of Madness to understand the present. In addition, through looking at who is incarcerated and how, the way in which the Act operates and the way in which privatization and neoliberalism are implicated in its continued implementation, this work will consider how racialized women show up in policy discourses, made both present and absent, pathologized and punished.

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