Dr. Megan Davies

The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Stories from MPA

A documentary about a group that transformed Canada's psychiatric landscape.

Vancouver's MPA (Mental Patients Association) was formed in 1970-71 as a grassroots response to deinstitionalization and tragic gaps in community mental health. Inverting traditional mental health hierchies, the group put former patients and sympathetic lay supporters in charge.  MPA provided homes, work and a sense of belonging and self-determination to ex-patients.

Dr. Megan Davies is a social historian of health who teaches in the Health & Society program at York University, Toronto and a part time resident of Hornby Island, BC, allowing her passion to the history of the province to flourish.  In addition to her involvement with collaborative educational and research website projects associated with the History of Maddness website,  she does research and writing on marginal/alternative health discourses and practices, rural health, food and health, old age, and state health and social welfare provisions.

For more information on the MPA documentary, visit historyofmadness.ca.

For the audio link to the lecture click on the link below: Dr. Megan Davies Lecture

On Tuesday, January 14, 2014 the University of Winnipeg History Department, The Riley Fellowship in Canadian History and the University of Winnipeg Oral History Centre presented Dr. Megan Davies' lecture.