How is mental health connected to history? And what can one hospital teach us about it? In this new podcast miniseries from Partners In Health, doctors, patients and historians in Sierra Leone tell the story of Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital--the oldest psychiatric hospital in sub-Saharan Africa--which marked its 200th anniversary this year.

This miniseries will dive deep into Sierra Leone’s history--including slavery, colonialism and civil war--to explore how the past holds implications for mental health. Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital--once an impoverished facility that, due to lack of resources, used chains to keep patients from harming themselves and others--tells a story of both trauma and transformation: how the past never fully leaves, but can inform our present and future.

Subscribe to Unchain and get ready for the first episode to drop on October 17.

Sierra Leone’s history--some of it centuries old, some of it within recent memory--is still relevant and impacting each of us, even across time and an ocean. We speak with Dr. Ismail Rashid, a scholar and professor of African history who grew up in Freetown, Sierra Leone, to learn about three key events that have shaped the country, especially in terms of mental health and mental health care: the Atlantic slave trade, British colonialism, and the civil war.

How has history influenced how Sierra Leone Psychiatric Teaching Hospital was built--and how is this history still present within its walls? We hear from two clinicians--Dr. Edward Nahim, who for decades served as Sierra Leone’s only psychiatrist, and Anneiru Braima, head nurse at the hospital--to learn how historical trauma, systemic oppression, and poverty prevented the hospital from providing effective mental health care for years, and produced a facility "unfit for human accommodation."