Mental Health Modernism: Modern Literature and the Aesthetics of Mental Health

Mental Health Modernism aims to examine how the mental hygiene movement—a precursor to the more palatable term, ‘mental health’—influenced, and was itself reshaped by, modern literature. Focusing on the period between 1908 and 1948, this innovative and interdisciplinary project will deliver the first literary history of mental health psychology. My project will catalogue and analyse the way modern writers interacted with mental health psychology through early mental hygiene clinics, document the central role of literary writing in the construction of mental health psychology, and help Australians understand the history that lies behind current discourse on mental health and wellbeing.