In this podcast, Professor Houston talks about the psychological impact on those affected by the Aberfan disaster of 1966. The podcast expands on an interview Prof Houston gave to BBC Wales as part of a series of podcasts recently produced about the disaster. It is strongly advised that you listen to podcast 7 of the BBC series prior to listening to this podcast. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/p09z3n7y Further reading: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/electroencephalogram/ Iain McLean and Martin Johnes, Aberfan: government and disasters (Cardiff: Welsh Academic Press, 2000), especially chapter 5. Morgan, L., Scourfield, J., Williams, D., Jasper, A., & Lewis, G. (2003). The Aberfan disaster: 33-year follow-up of survivors. British Journal of Psychiatry, 182(6), 532-536. doi:10.1192/bjp.182.6.532

Devolved psychiatries - Professor Rab Houston by Professor Rab Houston

Prof John Crichton - Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist and Chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in Scotland. What is a forensic psychiatrist? Far from the media stereotypes forensic psychiatrists are not so different to other doctors but working at the most extremes of human experience. Any one of us may have a mental health problem. Very rarely that problem may result in an inability to control ones actions and may lead to direful consequences. Forensic psychiatry is all about helping people recover their lives after such life changing events and by placing the care and treatment of patient at the centre ensuring everyone’s safety.

This is a 50 minute audio file of a talk I delivered at the National Records of Scotland on 7 August 2019, in connection with my hugely successful exhibition that they kindly hosted: ‘Prisoners or Patients? Criminal Insanity in Victorian Scotland’. It explains the records I used and the development of the criminal justice system’s attempts to deal with those who had committed serious offences, but were found to be insane and thus not responsible for their actions. The justice system faced the same problems as today and dealt with ‘prisoner-patients’ or ‘state lunatics’ (as they were known) in a remarkably humane fashion, given the constraints of limited resources, basic medicine, and different social attitudes 150 years ago. The talk explains in depth who the offenders were and what they had done, the processes for admission to, and release from the only such specialist facility in Scotland prior to the opening of The State Hospital at Carstairs in 1948, medical and scientific understandings of insanity, and the social context of Victorian Scotland.