Care and Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health

Care and Custody is a traveling banner exhibition and companion website that explores the treatment of people with mental health conditions throughout history, especially in the United States, bringing to light the tension that has existed between care and custody. Physicians, advocates, families, and government agencies have all contributed to the shaping of mental health policies. Care and Custody examines this history to understand how the country has moved away from custodial forms of treatment, toward more inclusive approaches, and worked to protect the rights of people with mental health conditions.

Care and Custody includes an education component featuring a new university module and a digital gallery that further explores selected works from the historical collections of the NLM, which are also available in their entirety in NLM Digital Collections.

The National Library of Medicine produced Care and Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health. The guest curator was public historian and educator Anne E. Parsons, PhD (UNC at Greensboro), who published the book From Asylum to Prison: Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Mass Incarceration.