Here we examine governmental policies that affect how people with mental health conditions are treated in society. The development of UK mental health services has been closely associated with the evolution of social policies, the increasing role of the state in the provisions for the population’s well-being, and the ‘Welfare State’. The provision of poor relief, dating from the Elizabethan Poor Law to its Victorian revision, has dominated the care of people with mental health conditions, both within and outside of institutions. Until the nineteenth century, the British state played a minimal role in the care of mental ill-health, and the 1800s witnessed a substantial growth in publicly funded asylums. These County Asylums were Poor Law institutions and remained so into the twentieth century. The UK’s modern mental health services arose from the Beveridge welfare state reforms but carried with them much of the baggage of the Victorian Poor Laws. The close relationship between the welfare state and mental health services illustrates the importance of social policy provision relating to income, employment, housing, education, health, and personal social services, to the broader provision of services for people with mental health conditions and the running of effective mental health services.