How to retrieve a patient’s hat – learning about mental health nursing by exploring our history

Abstract

Tracing your family history can be likened to connecting the seemingly random pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. In an educational context, historical artefacts can help to connect us with past systems of mental health care and can serve to acquaint mental health nursing students with their nursing ancestors.

In this article, we examine two such resources – a rather unusual book and a short documentary film – both of which have been used in sessions on the history of mental health nursing at the University of Wolverhampton.