Sunday Feature: New Generation Thinkers: Moral Machinery - The Invention of Mental Healthcare

The York Retreat, founded by the Quaker merchant Samuel Tuke in 1792, led the world in the humane treatment of the mentally ill. Horrified by the brutal conditions at the nearby York Lunatic Asylum - including beatings, confinement, and underfeeding - Tuke set out to launch a different kind of care for the mentally ill, based on the Quaker recognition of the inner light of God in each and every patient. The aim wasn't to simply keep patients out of wider society, but, radically for the time, to bring them back to reason and recovery. Corporal punishment was to be avoided, restraint kept to a minimum, and occupational therapy pioneered in order to help patients return to their reason. This radical approach began a series of reforms, and ignited a new kind of understanding of mental health, throughout the 19th century - one that is still influential today. Of course, it wasn't a perfect set up from the beginning - early inmates had to be Quakers in order to received treatment. God's children were not entirely equal. But over time, the benign and caring influence of the York Retreat led to a revolution in mental health care, across Europe and beyond