In Mental Health and Canadian Society leading researchers challenge generalisations about the mentally ill and the history of mental health in Canada. Considering the period from colonialism to the present, they examine such issues as the rise of the insanity plea, the Victorian asylum as a tourist attraction, the treatment of First Nations people in western mental hospitals, and post-World War II psychiatric research into LSD.

David Wright is Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine, McMaster University, and the co-editor of The Confinement of the Insane: International Perspectives, 1800-1965.