The history of mental health care in the twentieth century is a relatively uncharted territory. Exemplifying a new emphasis on the comparative approach, this volume offers overviews of various national psychiatric cultures and explores new research subjects. By confronting Dutch psychiatry with developments abroad, this collection highlights interesting contrasts and analogies. Some articles focus on the interaction between asylums and the family, others address issues such as psychiatric nursing, psychotropic drugs, the organisation and policies in the field of psychiatry, the role of various professions, the development of the inand outpatient mental health sectors, anti-psychiatry and de-institutionalisation. Several authors bring in the broader social and cultural context, such as the two World Wars, the welfare state, gender and class relations, the protest movement of the 1960s, democratisation, and totalitarian regimes. Two broad reflective reviews, one historiographic and the other contextual and comparative, conclude the volume.