Asylum patients from the early 20th century are helping improve mental health services across Tayside.
Scientists here are researching the way people were treated over 100 years ago to promote better mental health.
Dundee University is one of six partners in a UK-wide community programme, ‘Scaling Up Change Minds’, that is using archive collections to help locals.
The scheme connects isolated people with local heritage assets in a way that challenges them to use their creativity, a factor that is known to improve mental wellbeing.
It follows on from a pilot which saw the University’s Archives Services team work with Dundee Mental Health Network (DMHN) to carry out research into the ways mental health patients had been treated historically.
The University holds historical records for NHS Tayside, including archives from former asylums in the area.
DMHN service users were invited to examine archive materials and contribute their own stories to the archive at the close of the project.
One of the participants, Marion Fraser, from Dundee, says the project has changed her life and that of her fellow participants.
They have now formed a group looking to help others with a history of similar issues.
She said: “I am 65 and looking towards getting qualifications that will allow me and my colleagues to help others with mental health problems and this is all thanks to the Archives project.
“It was a battle for me to even go to the Archives but from the moment I got there I didn’t want to leave.
“I felt energised by the research and the people I met doing it. It has done so much for my confidence and mental health."
Jacqui Eccles, from Dundee University, said: “The pilot demonstrated the value of the archives in bringing communities together, in giving voices to individuals under-represented in the university environment and in wider society, and in creating spaces for difficult conversations.”
Participants in the trial uncovered the story of a young woman who was treated at a local asylum.
Edith Swankie was just 14 when she was admitted to Dundee Asylum on 19 June 1902.
The records show that the cause for admission was recorded as “symptoms of hypomania linked to hormones”.
She left the asylum six-months later and went on to marry a James Alexander Brown on 26 April 1911, and the couple went on to have a son, Alexander, who died in 1999.
The research group said they felt they got to know Edith and felt tremendous empathy for her and her situation.
They were delighted that she had gone on to enjoy a normal family life despite the difficulties she had encountered in adolescence.
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