Hi, my name is Morgan. My pronouns are she/her and I am a senior history major; this is my final semester at Mary Washington. I primarily study Russian and Soviet history, as well as state-run biological weapons programs in the mid to late 20th century. I primarily took this class because I needed a 400 level course to graduate and like morning classes, but I’m really looking forward to getting to explore this subject matter more. I’ve encountered the topic of what mental health and mental health care have look liked historically primarily through literature — I was a big horror fan when I was younger and the abandoned haunted asylum was, in my experience, one of the most common recurring tropes in mediocre young adult horror, and it’s come up quite a bit in 19th century British and Russian literature that I’ve read as well although tonally it’s quite different — so I’m curious to see what the real life basis for these literary topes are, as well as how they might have evolved from changes in popular perception of mental health.
