Slow practices of remembering a mental health day centre

Despite scholars debating the contested nature of the history of mental healthcare in the Western world for decades, the notion of steady progress is still a common way of thinking about this history. In Britain, the shift from institutional to community care has seen little investment in long-term therapeutic services, harming those with a chronic mental illness. The article draws on a heritage project that deliberately implemented slow memory-making processes through the application of participatory art-based methodologies to make visible the neglected memories of mental health service users who have relied on a mental health day centre in England for over half a century. Slow memory work unearthed counter-memories that challenge dominant contemporary mental healthcare policy and practice, such as the modernisation of mental health services that individualise care at the expense of communal services.