Library Exhibit Explores Care & Custody
From October 20 to November 25, the San Diego State University Library is hosting Care & Custody: Past Responses to Mental Health, on loan from the National Library of Medicine, which produced the exhibit and companion website.
This exhibit 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 & 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 & 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.
In addition to the exhibit, Health Sciences Librarian Cat Ellis has curated a book display which can be found in the Computer Lab (Love Library 1st floor) and a research guide with more resources about the history of institutionalization and mental health.
As a companion event, the library hosted a mental health zine workshop to promote mental health information. Participants created zines (small hand-made booklets) around their chosen mental health topic: a personal mental health experience or a general mental health topic. The main goal of this workshop was to educate non-professionals (i.e., consumers) on finding and evaluating credible mental health information. Ellis guided the zine-making and provided information about consumer health information sources such as MedlinePlus, NIMH, and others. Ellis’ information dovetailed with the resources that the SDSU Library and other San Diego Circuit libraries include in their guide to evaluating health information and avoiding misinformation.
Visit the library until the end of November to see the exhibit or explore the companion website to learn more about the history of mental health treatment.
