Stories of Silence, Echoes of Events: The Family as a Changing Site of Illness

Today, citizens in many western countries are increasingly confronted with questions of mental health. In the mid-twentieth century, mental issues were not a subject commonly debated in public. Rather, the shame connected to so-called nervous diseases caused many families to conceal the mental distress of a family member. Drawing on and unpacking three oral history interviews, this chapter explores how the family as an institution has formed a changing site of illness. Following ecological approaches to mental suffering, it more specifically shows how the changing dynamics of secrecy and disclosure within families have shaped and determined how mental illness has been experienced. In doing so, the chapter offers a novel lens on how secrecy, as a kind of knowledge management, has intersected with broader societal and cultural developments and shaped the situated and historically contingent experiences of mental suffering.