This paper identifies some of the themes that emerge from a study of official archival records from 1918 to 1934 on the subject of mental health in colonial Lesotho. They include: difficulties experienced by colonial medical doctors in diagnosing and treating mental illnesses, given the state of medical knowledge in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; impact of shortage of financial and other resources on the establishment and operation of medical services, especially mental health care; convergence of social order, financial and medical concerns as influences on colonial approaches to mental health care; and the question of whether Basotho colonial society saw institutionalization of their relatives as ‘hospitalization’ or ‘imprisonment’. Two case studies are presented as preliminary explorations of some of the themes.

本文确定了从 1918 年至 1934 年关于殖民地莱索托心理健康主题的官方档案记录研究中出现的一些主题。它们包括：鉴于 19 世纪和 20 世纪初期的医学知识水平，殖民地医生在诊断和治疗精神疾病方面遇到的困难；财政和其他资源短缺对医疗服务，特别是精神卫生服务的建立和运营的影响；社会秩序、金融和医疗问题的融合对殖民精神卫生保健方法的影响；以及巴索托殖民社会是否将其亲属的制度化视为“住院”或“监禁”的问题。提供了两个案例研究，作为对某些主题的初步探索。