The religious and secular antecedents of modern mental health care

The expanding volume of research on the history of mental health care is adding considerably to our understanding of how the past informs and shapes the present. As this article hopes to show, the aphorism: ‘the more things change, the more they remain the same’, continues to be true. David Hume (1711–1776), Scottish philosopher, historian, essayist and economist, wrote at length about the dialectic of constancy and change throughout history (Hume, 2015). The past, he argued, penetrates the present; in order to appreciate this, it is necessary to have a good understanding of what transpired in the past. The purpose of this article is to contrast the monastic system of care and the Poor Law system, with particular emphasis on how mental health care was understood and delivered.