INTRODUCTION

The aim of this book is to further our understanding of the social fate of people with a history of schizophrenic illness in our society. Contemporary mental health policy urges the inclusion in social life of a category of people who for a century or more had been exiled in the Victorian asylums. In this book we shall explore the trials of a group of people with a history of schizophrenic illness living in the community largely from their own point of view and in doing so attempt to throw some light on what inclusion in social life has come to mean for them.