Help!! What was mental health awareness like in the 1980s UK?

The NHS had the lowest amount of patients in the 80s, at around 79.6K, it was the best time for mental health hospitals after the 60s, hope that helped, i know its not much, are you doing Blood Brothers?

I mean, I don't think it was that different. Winston Churchill famously had depression, for instance, and he was way before the 80s. The suicide rate was about the same, slightly better if anything.

I think there was probably much more of a 'be a man and deal with it' type attitude, as well as lower expectation of the health service to fix things that are wrong (true across all of healthcare not just mental health). There was probably less awareness about things like PTSD.

Well actually I do think they were aware regarding PTSD as this was well after the war and many men dealt with it. During the World War periods it was referred to as Shell Shock so yeah they did know about PTSD i guess.

PTSD first made it's entry into the DSM-III in 1980 which nicely fits into interest in the 80s. Understanding, not so much, it's all very well saying these things, but after the vietnam war, countries had to deal with soldiers with PTSD and addictions for the 1980s, First gulf war, wars in the 1990s. I'm not really seeing the understanding of PTSD in the 1980s. The Shell shock, or war neuroses or various other names it had at other times and in other countries does go back a long way. It misses the point, in the western world most PTSD is caused by other things, not wars. I would say PTSD didn't start to gain mainstream understanding until halfway through the 2010s.

1980s wouldn't have been a bundle of fun for public awareness at all in other ways. Most of the 1980s was pre-SSRIs (and specifically pre-prozac). So yeah TCAs and MAOIs with all the side effects that go with them and hospitals and a bit of counselling would have been your options. The talk around SSRIs and serotonin although incorrect would have profoundly changed attitudes to depression. Depression had a massive stigma in the 1970s and 80s. Research looking back on it said doctors/health system was quite bad/very variable at picking up depression certainly pre-1990s. 1980s postnatal depression badly understood. Someone with OCD would have faced a massive amount of stigma for being 'odd'. Anxiety was still called 'nerves'. The 1980s neuroses was still a term used widely. Many mental health disorders it would have been believed that people could 'catch it' off other people. Community mental hospitals were still knocking around in much more urban locations (leading to quite vivid recollections). Domestic abuse would have been rife and tolerated. Things like social anxiety weren't called that it was called the superfriendly term 'social phobia'. In the 1980s in the UK and US used horrific medical procedures which carried on after that but became less common.

That's some very interesting insight thanks!

I'm not convinced all the differences are as stark as you describe. For example, which OCD awareness is pretty good on TSR and in the psych community, are they really not going to be called 'odd' outside of that circle? That applies to... well most of your points tbh. Psychosurgery was at its very end in the early 80s, but I guess it was still carried out in small numbers.

Out of interest: you seem very positive about that changes that have happened since the 80s. Other standard of living parameters have also increased. Why do you think the suicide rate now is about the same as it was in the late 80s? Certainly progress during the 80s was substantially better than current...