Not (just) a museum, a Mind Museum: The slow unraveling of stigma, stereotypes, and Sanism on the past, present and future of mental difference—a Mad Studies review of Francesca Lanz's Mind Museums

Francesca Lanz’s Mind Museums: Former Asylums and the Heritage of Mental Health introduces Lanz’s concept of “mind museums”—a museum within the space of a former psychiatric hospital that aims for awareness and destigmatisation of mental health today. This review weighs up the usefulness of combining mind museums with Mad studies, discussing their common goals that include highlighting the past, present, and future of mental health in line with the slow unravelling of stigma, stereotypes, and sanism.
Mind Museums provides a short summary of medical treatments, history of asylum buildings and practices, and literature reviews of Madness and former European asylums. Of significant interest are specific mind museum examples, fieldwork interviews, narratives of place, research methodologies, and descriptive exhibition tours. This book is important for storytellers, activists, researchers, and sanism disruptors, invested in social change and the destigmatisation of mental difference.