Professor of Psychiatry at the University of the West Indies, Dr. Frederick Hickling, will speak on the History of Psychiatry and Mental Health in Jamaica as the UWI forum “The University in the West” continues in Montego Bay on Wednesday April 9 at 5:30 p.m.  The lecture will be held at the St. John’s Methodist Church Hall, sponsored in collaboration with the UWI School of Continuing Studies in Montego Bay.

Mental Illness was not recognized in the initial period of African slave labour in European plantations in the West Indies. Custodial care for the treatment of mental illness was formally established by the completion of Lunatic Asylums in late 1800’s. The revolution in psychopharmacology in the 1950’s provided the new paradigm of community psychiatry. The Faculty of Medical Sciences, UWI played a major role in this process by establishing training programmes in psychiatry and mental health for Caribbean people. The process of de-instutionalization and downsizing of the Mental Hospitals and the establishment of rehabilitative processes for the severely mental ill have formed part of the new treatment paradigm of that period.

Professor Hickling will examine these developments in the context of the rising worldwide prevalence of mental illness, the decolonization of the Caribbean Psyche, and the challenge of globalization in the Caribbean.  Further information on the lecture series may be obtained from Mr. Joseph Pereira, Deputy Principal at Mona. Telephone No. 927-2114.