A Family Point of View: Negotiating Asylum Care in Alberta, 1905–1930

Abstract

This paper analyzes the meaning of mental illness and institutional care from a family point of view, using family correspondence and police reports about asylum admission of family members in Alberta at the beginning of the 20th century. Portraying the asylum as a place of negotiation, the analysis reveals that despite families' lack of authority over asylum admission, they nevertheless were active participants in structuring this new form of public care once it became available in Alberta. Families negotiated and contested existing medical and legal norms that structured asylum care in order to meet their own needs and demands. Categories of age, class, gender, race, and region intersected in shaping the family experience of mental illness. The paper concludes that families expected a newly built institution to provide relief of their social problems, which was at odds with the legal and medical norms regarding asylum admission.