Hans Pols
Maybe it is because I grew up near a mental hospital. Maybe it is because my father worked in the out-patient clinic of that mental hospital. Or maybe it is the frequent discussions between my aunt, an orthodox psychoanalyst, and my father, an eclectic whatever that sparked my interest to become a historian of psychiatry and mental health care. I have been particularly interested in psychiatry and mental health outside mental hospitals.
I wrote a dissertation on the highly idealistic American (and, later, international) mental health movement and their ideals to provide treatment in the community, set up prevention through workplaces and schools, and to create a better society where the prevalence of mental illness would be greatly reduced. Because colonial psychiatry became fashionable among historians of medicine, I then investigated the history of colonial psychiatry in the Dutch East Indies. I started to participate in discussions on mental health care in Indonesia and how it could be improved. This inspired a new research project, in which I interviewed psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health nurses, consumers of mental health care, and many others about mental health care in Indonesia today and the near future.
I then realised that I knew more about mental health care outside (and inside) mental hospitals in the Netherlands, the USA, and Indonesia than I did about Australia. I am currently busy to remedy this.