People with Mental and Intellectual Disabilities

by

Geoffrey Reaume

• LAST MODIFIED: 17 April 2025
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780197768723-0005

Introduction

Until the late twentieth century, histories which referred to people with mental and intellectual disabilities were focused primarily on doctors, diagnoses, and ideas around mental disability. With increasing interest in the social history of medicine and calls from historians to research patients’ lives, greater attention has been paid to the experiences and, where possible, the perspectives of people who were defined as having a mental disability or intellectual disability. Historians have also expanded this history beyond an able-bodied western European, North American context which, until recent decades, has been dominated by a focus on the histories of white, non-disabled people. In doing this work, historical researchers have had to address the ways in which language and terminology has changed. It is therefore important to note that, for the purposes of this annotated bibliography, the terms “mental and intellectual disabilities” are meant to reflect more recent developments in terminology which remain contentious; not everyone who is identified in this way would recognize these terms or agree with them, past or present. These terms are therefore meant to convey the broad diversity of people who were deemed as being mentally different in some way by state, religious and/or medical officials, as well as by other contemporaries, at a particular time and place. This includes someone who had what would now be regarded as a disability of the mind. Given the vast differences in history about what this means, from supernatural to biological to social causation, the citations included in this annotated bibliography are meant to provide a sampling of various interpretation on this topic that have been published in recent decades, particularly since the early 2000s. Research focusing on social histories and first-person perspectives that, prior to the late twentieth century, were generally ignored, have been prioritized in this list. It is also important to note that, while various thematic sections have been arranged to organize these sources, there is considerable crossover between sections. For example, the section People with Intellectual Disabilities and Their Families includes references that can also be included in the section Eugenics or Mental Institutions and vice versa. The main purpose in selections is to provide reference to the rapidly expanding work in this field by social historians of medicine and disability historians in which the lived experiences of people with mental and intellectual disabilities are the prime focus of research interest.

General Overviews

Overviews, which include single-authored sources and edited collections on the histories of people with mental and intellectual disabilities, have increased in recent decades to reflect the truly global scope of this topic. This includes social histories and interpretations from around the world since ancient times such as Dols 1992 in a study on medieval Islamic mad people. Eghigian 2017 is global in orientation from antitquity to modern times. Wide-ranging histories of madness in Porter 2002 and Scull 2015 tend to be more focused on the Western world, though not exclusively so. Evrard, et al. 2024 provides a succinct summary of voice hearing in the Western world since ancient times. Work which focuses on the period since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries includes Ellis, et al. 2021 about practitioners and patients and Ernst 2016 on psychiatric patients’ labor, while Jarrett 2020 focuses on ideas about people with intellectual disabilities since the 1700s. Kritsotaki, et al., 2016 provides analyses of mental health developments in the Western context since the mid-twentieth century, while Ward 2025 provides global perspectives on Indigeneity and disability, including historical reflections. As these studies indicate, attention to the social context, cultural dimensions, and non-medical aspects of this topic, such as religious and artistic representations, are expanding significantly. So too are studies of the daily lives of people inside of institutions and in the wider community in which most mentally disabled people lived, an area that is the focus of increasing research.

• Dols, Michael. Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.

  DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198202219.001.0001

  A study of madness in the Islamic world from c. 500 to c. 1500. Examines sources from historical texts, literature, and art to reveal the breadth and depth of this topic covering a millennium. This includes connections between Islamic and Christian ideas and practices. Particularly important is the discussion of fools in medieval Islamic culture and how people deemed mad could be considered part of the social fabric.

• Eghigian, Greg, ed. The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health. London: Routledge, 2017.

  A collection of twenty-one chapters encompassing nearly every continent with thematically arranged topics from ancient times to the present. This includes discussions of professions, institutions, religion, arts, colonialism, post-colonialism, experiences, diagnoses, and treatments.

• Ellis, Rob, Sarah Kendal, and Steven Taylor, eds. Voices in the History of Madness: Personal and Professional Perspective on Mental Health and Illness. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

  A collection of eighteen chapters, with an introduction and conclusion, on the various perspectives of psychiatric patients, and those who have engaged with them, including family members, staff members of medical facilities and people in local communities since the 17th century. Contributions from India, South Africa, Europe, and North America center on experiences of people who lived this history and their impact on the evolving treatment and conception of madness.

• Ernst, Waltraud, ed. Work, Psychiatry and Society, c. 1750−2015. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016.

  A collection of seventeen chapters on the history of patients’ labor from Japan, Europe, North America, and British colonies in India and the Caribbean. Studies include discussions of race, gender, and class while also raising issues around economic exploitation, as well as work as therapy. Overall, the chapters are necessarily more focused on psychiatric patients’ work in mental institutions, though there is a brief discussion of sheltered workshops.

• Evrard, Renaud, Bevis Beauvais, Aziz Essadek, Joelle Lighezzolo-Alnot, and Christophe Clesse. “Neither Saintly nor Psychotic: A Narrative Systematic Review of the Evolving Western Perception of Voice Hearing.” History of Psychiatry 35.2 (June 2024): 177–195.

  DOI: 10.1177/0957154X241231690

  An analysis of how people who hear voices have been perceived from ancient times to medieval, early modern, and modern periods. Discusses how tensions between acceptance and social isolation were reflected at various times from religious concepts of voice hearing to modern medical pathologization. The advent of Hearing Voices Groups which began in the late 1900s, has helped to promote more integration and understanding in contemporary times.

• Jarrett, Simon. Those They Called Idiots: The Idea of the Disabled Mind from 1700 to the Present Day. London: Reaktion Books, 2020.

  The author’s purpose is to understand what the word “idiot” meant, who was it used against, how terminology changed, and the impact on intellectually disabled people, proceeding from pre-industrial community settings to large-scale institutionalization beginning in the nineteenth century, to efforts to end incarceration in the latter twentieth century; the main emphasis is on the United Kingdom, particularly the period up to the 1870s.

• Kritsotaki, Despo, Vicky Long, and Matthew Smith, eds. Deinstitutionalisation and After: Post-War Psychiatry in the Western World. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.

  Thirteen contributions from Europe and North America describe various aspects of the deinstitutionalization process since the second half of the twentieth century. This includes chapters on ex-inmate publications and activism, community care or lack thereof, changing medical treatments and alternatives to institutional confinement.

• Porter, Roy. Madness: A Brief History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002

  The last book by the prolific historian of medicine is a succinct narrative of the histories of madness from ancient times filled with supernatural beliefs to the end of the twentieth century with medical model determinism and renewed skepticism about contemporary concepts.

• Scull, Andrew. Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, From the Madhouse to Modern Medicine. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.

  DOI: 10.2307/j.ctvc77hvc

  A comprehensive study of the history of madness from ancient times to the present incorporating themes ranging from otherworldly to organic interpretations; gender and class influences; artistic representation; the secularization of interpretations; madhouses and asylums; bio-determinism, medical treatments and pharmacology.

• Ward, John T, ed. Indigenous Disability Studies. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2025.

  DOI: 10.4324/9781032656519

  This collection of thirty-three chapters from around the globe includes intergenerational accounts of the psychological, spiritual, and material impacts of colonialism on Indigenous people as well as discussion of varied Indigenous understandings of disablement.