6 - Investing in Psychiatric Institutions and Expertise into the 1940s

Summary

This chapter focuses on the final decade of the mandate period, which was marked by notable investment in both psychiatric institutions and expertise. Against the backdrop of the Second World War and with partition on the horizon, this chapter traces two developments in particular: the opening of the third and final government mental health hospital at Jaffa in 1944 and the cultivation of expertise within the department of health around wartime trauma and mental health nursing. Far from reflecting any new vision for colonial development on the part of the mandate government, a closer look at each of these developments reveals that investment was driven as much by colonial subjects and crisis as by British design, and built figuratively and literally on the foundations of the past.