Institutional Treatment of Mental Defectives, with Special Reference to Occupation

1925 ◽  
Vol 71 (295) ◽  
pp. 694-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. McCutcheon

The problem of the treatment of defectives is somewhat different from that met with in regard to the patients in mental hospitals. In the case of mental hospital patients most of them have filled useful positions in the world, and also the percentage of possible recoveries is hopeful, and many of them are able to resume their former occupations. But mental defectives are social misfits, many with anti-social traits, others neglected and ill-treated, and again others of a much lower grade, many of whom are helpless and even cot-cases.

1954 ◽  
Vol 100 (418) ◽  
pp. 241-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arthur Harris ◽  
Vera Norris

We have reported a follow-up study of patients first admitted to London County Council Mental Hospitals in 1930 (Harris and Lubin, 1952, Harris and Norris, in press). The present paper deals with a group of similar patients, i.e., psychotics from whom epileptics, known organic cases, ascertained mental defectives, those over the age of 40 and those who had been admitted to a mental hospital previously were excluded, who were transferred to mental hospitals from St. Francis Observation Ward during the period May 1940 to May 1942. The main differences between this group and the 1930 one were: (a) The Mental Treatment Act of 1930 had come into operation and many were admitted to mental hospitals as voluntary patients; (b) modern physical methods of treatment were in use; (c) in most cases the history was known.


1946 ◽  
Vol 92 (386) ◽  
pp. 96-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donal F. Early

The problem of tuberculosis amongst mental hospital patients is of importance from both the psychiatric and public health point of view. Most of the active methods of psychiatric treatment must be abandoned or discontinued when physical illness intervenes. The problem is even more far-reaching from the standpoint of public health. Wingfield, Trail, Banks and McDougall (1942) have estimated that there is probably a reservoir of 250,000 infectious cases recognized and unrecognized in England, Scotland and Wales, and several authors have pointed out that mental hospitals contribute a disproportionate number to this reservoir. Modern methods of mental hospital administration with parole and leave privileges applied to the maximum number of patients lend importance to the public health aspect, not only the patients themselves and hospital staff being menaced, but also patients' visitors and relatives and other contacts outside hospital. The incidence of tuberculosis in mental hospitals has been variously estimated at 5 to 10 times and the mortality in peace-time 8 or 9 times that of the general population. These figures are sufficient to justify all efforts to bring the problem under control.


1940 ◽  
Vol 86 (362) ◽  
pp. 532-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. B. Brody

The Terman vocabulary test is probably used in mental hospitals more often than any other single test for measuring intelligence. The 1937 Stanford Binet Vocabulary List contains only 45 words selected from the original hundred. There is therefore a temptation to use it in place of the old one on account of its brevity. But this may cause serious errors.


1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Crepet ◽  
Giovanni De Plato

In 1978, Italy became the first country in the world to pass a law eliminating mental hospitals and replacing them with services in the community. This victory was in large part due to the foresight and commitment of psychiatrist Franco Basaglia and his colleagues, whose work showed how psychiatric assistance could be realized in practice without asylums and without force and violence. This article analyzes why the anti-institutional reform took place in Italy when it did, and reviews twenty years of reform activity involving an alliance between democratic mental health professionals, politicians, workers' organizations, and private citizens. Although the reform gives psychiatry the opportunity to transform itself into a science of liberation, conservative political and scientific forces are attempting to maintain the logic of the asylum and replace the mental hospital with other institutions which continue to practice segregation in a decentralized form. The outcome of this radical experiment in creating a nonrepressive psychiatry remains uncertain.


1969 ◽  
Vol 115 (521) ◽  
pp. 465-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. J. Oldham

The decade following the end of World War II saw a progressive rise in the admission rate to mental hospitals in this country. The population of mental hospitals rose to a peak of 152,000 in England and Wales in 1954, since when there has been a steady decline. These fluctuations have been analysed by such authors as Norton (1961) and Tooth and Brooke (1961). The latter attributed the more recent decline to increased efficiency of treatment and rehabilitation, and predicted a continued fall so reducing the mental hospital patients by about 1970 that they would be covered by an allocation of 1 · 8 beds per thousand population. Maclay (1963) believed this prediction to err if anything on the conservative side and the Ministry of Health (1962) based its plans for psychiatric beds upon this ratio. In these plans the Ministry accepted the thesis that short-stay psychiatric patients should preferably be treated in general hospital units near to their homes whilst patients needing a longer hospital stay should be catered for in specialized hospitals for that purpose. The prediction in the Ministry of Health's Hospital Plan (1962) that there would be a steadily declining mental hospital population has been severely criticized by Gore and Jones (1961) but supported by Orwin and Sim (1965) in their analysis of the effects of the provision of acute general hospital psychiatric units in the Birmingham area. The importance of accurately assessing the psychiatric hospital bed needs over the next twenty years, given a full range medical and ancillary services, is vital to future planning and has been much in the author's mind when writing this paper.


1950 ◽  
Vol 96 (404) ◽  
pp. 726-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Halstead

Before the the last war psychological tests were not much used in mental hospitals, as there were few tests suitable for adults and, for that matter, hardly any trained clinical psychologists in the country. The “Binet” test or some modification of it was most commonly used, but it is unsatisfactory for adults, and now redundant. The war produced a considerable number of reliable adult tests, standardized on large samples of service men and women, and, although the effective age-range was restricted by service requirements, the tests are a great improvement on pre-war material, and a welcome addition to the clinical psychologist's stock-in-trade.


2016 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Murthy ◽  
M. Isaac ◽  
H. Dabholkar

Mental hospitals in India, as elsewhere in the world, have played an important role in the care of persons with mental illness. Since their inception, they have both been decried for gross violations of human rights and dignity as well as lauded as places of refuge and care for persons turned away by the communities. In a country where community interventions for mental health care are still fragmentary, the mental hospital still continues to be a relevant and legitimate locus of care along with other limited resources available for the care of persons with mental illness outside of the family. In India, positive changes in the infrastructure and resourcing of mental hospitals, reductions in involuntary admissions and improvements in facilities have largely occurred through judicial interventions. Recent pilot interventions for rehabilitation of long-stay patients point towards the need to develop rehabilitation and community facilities for persons with severe mental illness.


1923 ◽  
Vol 69 (284) ◽  
pp. 24-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. H. Shaw

The average mortality from tubercular disease in mental hospitals is over nine times that of the outside population, and as regards dysentery, which is rarely met with among the sane community in this country, the Board of Control state that “during the second half of 1921 some 728 persons were attacked by the disease in mental hospitals and of these 126 died.” It is a most serious reflection that consequent on admission to a mental hospital a valuable life may be lost, such as, for instance, that of a young mother suffering from nervous shock after confinement, as a result of infection with one of these pathogenic organisms. It is therefore a matter of most urgent necessity that everything possible shall be done in order to eliminate dysentery from our mental hospitals and to reduce the mortality from tuberculosis; and now that the voluntary boarder principle is likely to be adopted for public mental hospitals it becomes more than ever necessary.


1923 ◽  
Vol 69 (285) ◽  
pp. 220-224

The relinquishing by Sir Frederick Mott of the offices of Pathologist to the London County Mental Hospitals and Director of the Laboratory is happily not the occasion for a funeral oration, nor does it connote a cessation of those wide activities in the world of neurology and psycho-pathology which have distinguished his career, of which his 18 years' mental hospital service forms only a part, howbeit an important one. On the contrary, as we announced in our last issue, he has accepted the appointment of Honorary Director of the Pathological Laboratory of the Birmingham City Mental Hospitals and Lecturer on Morbid Psychology at Birmingham's University. It thus happens that London's loss is Birmingham's gain, but what is more important, Sir Frederick Mott's services to scientific psychiatry are retained, and, we hope, for many years to come. In his case, as with many illustrious men who have adorned the learned professions, age has only served to broaden the outlook, to give insight, and to ripen wisdom, all of which psychological medicine sorely needs if it is to be a fruitful branch of the healing profession. His British Medical Association Lecture on Psychology and Medicine, delivered in November last (1), is illustrative of this fact, and that his pronouncements now are of more value than at any period of his career.


1953 ◽  
Vol 99 (414) ◽  
pp. 123-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalton E. Sands

Since the treatment of juveniles as in-patients in a special unit is somewhat unusual in mental hospital practice, a brief introduction may not be out of place. These units might be considered as another development in a trend which has been progressing for the past 25 years. Until 1930 certification of all admissions to mental hospitals and a mainly custodial régime ensured the majority of patients being largely the end-results of psychiatric illness. Since 1930 the steadily increasing use of the voluntary system has brought many patients to hospital at a stage when their illness can be favourably influenced by modern therapeutic methods. An associated development was the increased provision of wards or units separate from the chronically disturbed cases, or even, as at this hospital, a complete villa system of detached and semi-detached wards for mainly voluntary adult patients.


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