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This website has been running since 2012 and has been funded from my own private funds and lots of volunteer work from willing people who have contributed by including research, transcription services, information technology consultations, historical consultations and free use of a range of equipment for recording oral histories and videos.

The costs have risen with the Australian dollar’s decline and as a result we have inserted a Paypal donation button. The money raised will completely, 100% be used for the hosting and research for this site.

Please consider a donation of $5.00 AU to keeping this work publicly available for education and continually informing our community about the history of Willow Court.

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‘Understanding Resilience through the Frame of Madness’  

“Woman,  you  seem  to  want  to  create  a  disturbance”1   By Nicola  Goc  

“Paper  presented  at  FCRC  Seminar  May  2013.  This  paper  is  a  draft  the  author  is   continuing  to  develop  this  research.  For  any  queries  please  contact  the  author”

This is a paper by Nicola Goc who has researched in some detail the lives of women sent to the asylum at New Norfolk in the early to mid 1800’s.  It talks about treatments and conditions in the Colonies early history.

Some of the knowledge comes from Dr. G. Crabb’s collection of medical knowledge in the book, “The History of Lachlan Park”.

In this paper she explores the use of an “electric machine” which was used here at the Hospital before it was used and recorded in the history books for the well established English Hospitals.

Electrical machine

Nicola Goc Madness 24 pages.

 This  paper  looks  at  the  concept  of  ‘resilience’  through  the  frame  of  ‘madness’.  It  draws   upon  primary  historical  documents,  namely  a  nineteenth  century     New  Norfolk  Lunatic Asylum  Casebook  HSD246/1/2  Female  (mental)  (Volume  No.  3),  and  secondary  sources   to  address  two  key  questions:  

1. Were  the  convict  women  admitted  to  New  Norfolk  Asylum  suffering  from   insanity/mania/amentia  as  a  result  of  hereditary  factors,  criminality,  moral  and  physical   degeneracy  and  a  low  social  status  –  or  was  their  mental  state  a  combination  of  factors   including  an  emotional  response  to  the  trauma  of  forced  migration?    

2. How  was  female  ‘insanity’  understood  and  managed  in  the  penal  and  medical   institutions  of  colonial  Van  Diemen’s  Land?   

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John Langford

Last week I had the pleasure of filming an interview with John Langford OA who worked at Lachlan Park Hospital in the early 1960’s. John went to the UK to study in 1966 -70 and returned to the Royal Derwent Hospital to assist Dr Eric Cunningham Dax regionalise Mental Health services in Tasmania Cunningham Dax Report. As part of that work he started an organisation called Community Hostels Inc in Tasmania.

A trained Psychiatric Social Worker, John, at the age of 80 years took the time off his full time job to speak with us. He recently opened an accommodation centre in Mackay Queensland to assist people in crisis and has been awarded the highest honour you can get from Rotary Australia the ‘Paul Harris Award’.

This now matched his 2014 member of the Order of Australia as part of the Queen’s Birthday honours list. It was a delight to meet and talk with this gentleman who has dedicated his life’s work to people with mental health issues.

John’s 80th Birthday and Rotary award         John’s Queens Birthday award

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Above: left, John Langford O.A. right, Paul Mayne (c) 2016 Mark Krause

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Practical knowledge and general information test

one page test

Here is a local Tasmanian test for Mental Deficiency from Willow Court, most likely called Mental Diseases Hospital at the time. The test was clearly developed during either the time of King George V or VI, most likely after the new Act in 1920.

Today the evaluation and classification of an intellectual disability is a complex issue. There are three major criteria for intellectual disability: significant limitations in intellectual functioning, significant limitations in adaptive behavior, and onset before the age of 18.

The IQ test is a major tool in measuring intellectual functioning, which is the mental capacity for learning, reasoning, problem solving, and so on. A test score below or around 70—or as high as 75—indicates a limitation in intellectual functioning.

Other tests determine limitations in adaptive behavior, which covers three types of skills:

Conceptual skills—language and literacy; money, time, and number concepts; and self-direction
Social skills—interpersonal skills, social responsibility, self-esteem, gullibility, naïveté (i.e., wariness), social problem solving, and the ability to follow rules, obey laws, and avoid being victimized
Practical skills—activities of daily living (personal care), occupational skills, healthcare, travel/transportation, schedules/routines, safety, use of money, use of the telephone

In defining and assessing intellectual disability it is stresses that, in addition to an assessment of intellectual functioning and adaptive behavior, professionals must consider such factors as:

Community environment typical of the individual’s peers and culture.
Linguistic diversity.
Cultural differences in the way people communicate, move, and behavior.

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Cunningham Dax Report 1962

Dax Report 1962

K block

K1 Block demolished after recommendation of the Dax Report 1960’s

This is the original Cunningham Dax Report that set the hospital (then Lachlan Park Hospital) in a new direction in 1962. It looked at the direction and some issues that had arisen but concentrated on a new vision for a statewide approach to mental health, alcoholism and mental deficiency (old term used). It was the plan to divide the hospital, re categorise patients and professionalise, recruit and renumerate appropriately the staff. There are planned routine changes and most renovations were to be done with labour supplied by patients. 32 pages. (for study purposes only)

Cunningham Dax is also responsible for the Museum attached to the University of Melbourne and it is described as consists of over 12,000 creative works on paper, paintings, ceramics and textiles, created by people who have experienced mental illness or psychological trauma. The Collection is dedicated to the conservation and ethical exhibition of these works, and the use of art in public mental health education.

Much more than an art gallery, the centre provides a multidimensional experience in the growing field of art in mental health. Increasingly diverse audiences reflect the broader community’s interest in creativity and the mind.

Thank you to Lyell Wilson for supply of this document.

 

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