ISLAND LECTURE SERIES
Beyond the Asylum: The Evolution of Mental Health Care in Prince Edward Island, 1846-2017
with Dr. Tina Pranger
Tuesday, January 21, 2020 | 7 p.m. | SDU Main Building Faculty Lounge
The Island Lecture Series January 2020 lecture featured Dr. Tina Pranger speaking about her book, Beyond the Asylum, which documents the history of mental health care on Prince Edward Island.
How we as Islanders have historically cared for people requiring mental health care has evolved considerably through a cycle starting with sheltering them at home or in the community, to 100 years of long term institutionalization in the asylum or mental hospital, followed by the growth of community-based services and the movement of hundreds of patients out of hospital and back into the community. Today, Islanders can access a comprehensive spectrum of mental health services that include — but also go far beyond — the asylum/mental hospital. Beyond the Asylum, the first-ever history of mental health care in PEI, richly details this often bumpy evolution of care. This story is an important one for Islanders as it reflects who we were, who we are now, and who we could be in terms of how we care for people who live with mental illness.
Beyond the Asylum was published in 2019 by the Prince Edward Island Museum & Heritage Foundation and is available for purchase here.
- Beyond the Asylum one-page info sheet (PEI Museum & Heritage Foundation)
- Doctor’s ‘compassion for the marginalized’ leads to first-ever book chronicling mental health care in P.E.I. (The Guardian, PEI, December 1, 2019)
- How mental health on P.E.I. has evolved from the ‘lunatic asylum’ (CBC News, November 30, 2019)
![](http://projects.upei.ca/copyofiis/files/2019/12/Tina-Pranger.jpeg)
Tina Pranger, PhD (Social Science and Health), has over 35 years of experience in the mental health field as a mental health occupational therapist at St. Joseph’s Health Centre and at the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, Toronto; a professor of mental health occupational therapy at Queen’s University; a researcher and the mental health consultant with the PEI Department of Health; and as a mental health officer and the manager of the Rehabilitation Program at Veterans Affairs Canada. She lives in Stanley Bridge, PEI.
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