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Podcast: Dan Snow's History Hit
Episode: Mental Health in Victorian Britain
Description: This week is Mental Health Awareness Week in the UK so we’ve got a special episode exploring the surprising way Victorians approached mental health treatment in the 19th century. Oral historian Stella Man from the Glenside Hospital Museum in Bristol tells Dan how the Victorians get a bad rap but in truth, they took a very forward thinking occupational approach. With no real medicines to prescribe at that time, psychiatric institutions like Glenside turned to exercise, nature, rest and finding meaningful activities and work for patients to do. 50% of patients who were admitted were able to leave the in...