History of Psychiatry: Madness,Science,Culture

History of Psychiatry: Madness, Science, Culture is a fully peer reviewed hybrid journal with an openly eclectic mix of themes and a heterodox readership. Endorsing a broad, ‘big-tent’ historiographic agenda, the journal encourages interdisciplinary dialogue between historians and psychiatric practitioners, but also with other research communities.

The journal supports historical research on the history of psychiatry as a medical specialty. It is concerned with the discipline’s professional development, including but not limited to the historical continuities and ruptures of its conceptual apparatus, taxonomic conventions, diagnostic techniques, and therapeutic practices.

It also serves as a wider platform for intersectional research on the history of madness, exploring the larger cultural, socio-economic, and political manifestations of mental distress, as well as its lived experience. It seeks to expand opportunities for cross-fertilization that can help challenge stock narratives and temper disciplinary paradigms.

The editors and Advisory Board members are committed to promoting the research of scholars engaged in close readings of the historical evidence. They embrace the vexing challenge of sustaining historical contingency and resisting the sirens of reductive analysis. As such, the journal is a forum for our ongoing assessments of the plurality of meanings we ascribe to the past.

The March 2026 issue (Volume 37, Issue 1) features an Editorial by the Editor-in-Chief, Eric J. Engstrom, outlining in greater detail the journal’s aims and scope. Read the Editorial here: https://journals-sagepub-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/doi/10.1177/0957154X261425766.

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

History of Psychiatry: Madness, Science, Culture is available on Sage Journals Online.

Submit your manuscript today at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/hpy.