Who are the famous figures of mental health nursing? How does the past inform the future of mental health care? Pertinent questions, you might think. Yet in my experience, as a nurse educator and extracurricular historian of mental health nursing, they are not readily answerable by qualified or budding practitioners. The first would expose a remarkable lack of celebrated figures in our field. General nursing has its heroine in Florence Nightingale, but asking students to name pioneers of psychiatric nursing draws a blank stare. The second question relates to the transformation from institutional to community-based care. Perceptions of the asylum are often polarised between a dark age of oppression and a pastoral idyll. To read the full article, log in using your SSSFT NHS OpenAthens details.