
Professor Matthew Smith
History
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AHRC/Medical Humanities Award (Best Research) - shortlisted Recipient 2021 Griffin Award Recipient 2020 Prose Awards (Honorable Mention) for Another Person's Poison: A History of Food Allergy Recipient 2016 Member, Young Academy of Scotland Recipient 1/6/2014 AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker Recipient 2012 Pressman-Burroughs Wellcome Career Development Award Recipient 2010
Prize And Awards
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Historical and social science perspectives on food allergy Smith Matthew Clinical and Experimental Allergy Vol 53, pp. 902-910 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1111/cea.14360 The First Resort : The History of Social Psychiatry in the United States Smith Matthew (2023) Getting on in Gotham : the midtown Manhattan study and putting the social in psychiatry Smith Matthew Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry Vol 45, pp. 385-404 (2021) https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-021-09751-4 "Snips and snails and puppy dog tails" : Boys and behaviour in the USA Smith Matthew Canadian Bulletin of Medical History Vol 36, pp. 51-79 (2019) https://doi.org/10.3138/cbmh.236-112017 Preventing Mental Illness : Past, Present and Future Kritsotaki Despo, Long Vicky, Smith Matthew Mental Health in Historical Perspective Mental Health in Historical Perspective (2018) Proteins, Pathologies and Politics : Dietary Innovation and Disease from the Nineteenth Century Gentilcore David, Smith Matthew (2018)
Publications
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Free Thinking Recipient 13/6/2023 PhD Examination - University of Warwick Examiner 14/3/2023 Financial Insecurity, Mental Health and Care Leavers Speaker 9/2022 Free Thinking Broadcast Recipient 19/12/2021 Keynote - Australia and New Zealand Association for the History of Medicine Speaker 12/2021 External Examiner for PhD at Queen Mary University of London Examiner 1/2021
An Ounce of Prevention: A History of Social Psychiatry, 1939-Present Smith, Matthew (Fellow) "In 2010 I attended an international conference, entitled 'The Social Determinants of Mental Health' and held in Chicago. Its focus was to address the socioeconomic factors, ranging from poverty to violence, believed to cause mental illness. The participants, including David Satcher, the former US Surgeon General, not only advocated a more socially-informed approach to understanding mental health, but also wanted to launch a political movement that would place prevention at the heart of mental health policy and clinical practice.
Such an approach to mental health was not new, but its history has not been written and so was unknown to most of the conference participants. Building on the mental hygiene and child guidance movements of the early twentieth century, and reaching its peak during the 1950s and 1960s, the psychiatric and political movement known as social psychiatry similarly advocated a preventive approach to mental illness, which stressed alleviating social deprivation and inequality. But, although social psychiatry would become a major force within American psychiatry and politics, influencing both presidents of the American Psychiatric Association and the legislation of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, it faded away in the subsequent decades, as biological approaches to mental illness became the dominant force in American psychiatry.
Given the World Health Organisation's recent warnings that mental illness will become the world's most common malady within twenty years (Mental Health Atlas, 2011) - not to mention the escalating social and economic cost of such conditions - it is not surprising that preventive approaches to mental illness are again attracting attention. This project seeks not only to analyse a neglected chapter in the historiography of psychiatry, but also to inform current attempts to address the social determinants of mental health by examining the successes and failures of social psychiatry.
The project is divided into three sections. The first examines the intellectual origins of social psychiatry, including its roots in the mental hygiene and child guidance movements of the early twentieth century. Widespread interest in social psychiatry escalated not only because it addressed concerns about the rising rates of mental illness, but also because it represented an interdisciplinary collaboration between psychiatrists and social scientists that inspired a wide audience in academic and public policy circles. The project will address the historical factors involved in this cooperation, and assess both the benefits and disadvantages of such an interdisciplinary approach to mental health. The second section of the project examines the zenith of social psychiatry, as it threatened to eclipse psychoanalysis and biological psychiatry (which stressed neurological explanations of and pharmaceutical treatments for mental illness) during the 1960s. Unfortunately for social psychiatrists, however, the interest in preventive approaches waned during the 1970s and 1980s, as psycho-pharmacology became more popular amongst both psychiatrists and their patients, and economic and political pressures deflated the socially progressive zeal of American politicians and mental health professionals. The third section of the project will examine not only the decline of social psychiatry, but also explore why preventive approaches to mental illness have once again found favour in both the US and elsewhere." 01-Jan-2014 - 31-Jan-2017 Preventing Mental Illness Past Present and Future Witness Seminar Smith, Matthew (Principal Investigator) 01-Jan-2016 - 31-Jan-2016 Health History in Action : The Society for the Social History of Medicine Postgraduate Career Development Workshop and Conference Smith, Matthew (Principal Investigator) 01-Jan-2015 - 31-Jan-2015 DSM-5 and the Future of Psychiatric Diagnosis Smith, Matthew (Academic) 06-Jan-2014 - 08-Jan-2014 One Person's Food is Another's Poison: Food Allergy in the Twentieth Century - Fellowship Smith, Matthew (Principal Investigator) 05-Jan-2011 - 04-Jan-2012 Mental Health Futures Collaborative Cogan, Nicola (Principal Investigator) Parra Rodriguez, Mario (Principal Investigator) Fleming, Leanne (Principal Investigator) Quinn, Neil (Principal Investigator) Tse, Dwight (Principal Investigator) Knifton, Lee (Principal Investigator) McCann, Lisa (Principal Investigator) Maguire, Roma (Principal Investigator) Smith, Matthew (Principal Investigator) Graham, Christopher Darryl (Principal Investigator) Grealy, Madeleine (Principal Investigator) Stephen, Susan (Principal Investigator) Weir, Natalie Mcfadyen (Principal Investigator) Donnachie, Craig (Principal Investigator) Cameron, Julie (Principal Investigator) Kane, Tony (Co-investigator) Lakey, Trevor (Academic) Donovan, Kevin (Fellow) This Engage with Strathclyde event is aimed at all those with an interest in mental health including people with lived experience, NHS and social care personnel and staff, occupational health and human resource management staff, student support services, university student and staff, academics, private and public sector and other personnel interested in mental health research and knowledge exchange.
12-Jan-2023 - 12-Jan-2023
Research Interests
When do certain behavioural characteristics become a psychiatric disorder? How do we know what foods are healthy for us? Why have rates of food allergy and intolerance escalated in recent years? What are the root causes of mental illness? My research involves analysing questions such as these from a historical perspective not only in the interest of charting our past, but also in the hopes of informing our future.
Professional Activities
Projects
Such an approach to mental health was not new, but its history has not been written and so was unknown to most of the conference participants. Building on the mental hygiene and child guidance movements of the early twentieth century, and reaching its peak during the 1950s and 1960s, the psychiatric and political movement known as social psychiatry similarly advocated a preventive approach to mental illness, which stressed alleviating social deprivation and inequality. But, although social psychiatry would become a major force within American psychiatry and politics, influencing both presidents of the American Psychiatric Association and the legislation of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, it faded away in the subsequent decades, as biological approaches to mental illness became the dominant force in American psychiatry.
Given the World Health Organisation's recent warnings that mental illness will become the world's most common malady within twenty years (Mental Health Atlas, 2011) - not to mention the escalating social and economic cost of such conditions - it is not surprising that preventive approaches to mental illness are again attracting attention. This project seeks not only to analyse a neglected chapter in the historiography of psychiatry, but also to inform current attempts to address the social determinants of mental health by examining the successes and failures of social psychiatry.
The project is divided into three sections. The first examines the intellectual origins of social psychiatry, including its roots in the mental hygiene and child guidance movements of the early twentieth century. Widespread interest in social psychiatry escalated not only because it addressed concerns about the rising rates of mental illness, but also because it represented an interdisciplinary collaboration between psychiatrists and social scientists that inspired a wide audience in academic and public policy circles. The project will address the historical factors involved in this cooperation, and assess both the benefits and disadvantages of such an interdisciplinary approach to mental health. The second section of the project examines the zenith of social psychiatry, as it threatened to eclipse psychoanalysis and biological psychiatry (which stressed neurological explanations of and pharmaceutical treatments for mental illness) during the 1960s. Unfortunately for social psychiatrists, however, the interest in preventive approaches waned during the 1970s and 1980s, as psycho-pharmacology became more popular amongst both psychiatrists and their patients, and economic and political pressures deflated the socially progressive zeal of American politicians and mental health professionals. The third section of the project will examine not only the decline of social psychiatry, but also explore why preventive approaches to mental illness have once again found favour in both the US and elsewhere."