The Treatment of the Voluntary Boarder

1933 ◽  
Vol 79 (324) ◽  
pp. 102-136
Author(s):  
Henry L. Wilson

The following paper is the result of experience gained during two and a half years' work at The Retreat, York.It was prepared at the time that public attention was being focused upon the Mental Treatment Act, 1930. One of the most striking features of that Act was the provision that any person—pauper or otherwise—could be received into any mental hospital by applying for admission voluntarily. The removal of the bar of certification was widely welcomed; this welcome was believed by the writer to be partly a sentimental one. So little was known of any of the legal and medical difficulties which the voluntary boarder system had produced during the forty years it had been in fairly constant use in the registered mental hospitals, that these problems were seldom referred to when the Mental Treatment Act was under consideration.

1936 ◽  
Vol 82 (336) ◽  
pp. 43-46
Author(s):  
J. K. Marshall

Since the passing of the Mental Treatment Act of 1930 the use made of Section 5, dealing with temporary treatment without certification, has varied considerably in different areas, and has, in general, been much less than had been hoped for. In a discussion of this section of the Act held at a quarterly meeting of the Royal Medico-Psychological Association on November 20, 1934, Sir Hubert Bond stated that, while in the opinion of the Board of Control temporary patients should form 15% of the admissions to a mental hospital, in 1933 the proportion of such patients to total admissions was 6·5% in registered hospitals and licensed houses, and only 1·8% in the public mental hospitals.


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.


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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsi Heimonen

This article discusses an artistic act: walking for seven sequential days inside a cage made of chicken wire in the grounds of a former mental hospital in Lapinlahti in Helsinki, Finland and its potential to offer insights into past events in mental hospitals through the notions of corporeal attunement and atmosphere. The idea for Walking Cage was prompted by a word in the data, which included memories by patients and non-patients of Finnish mental hospitals gathered in connection with a multidisciplinary research project. Passers-by, occasional co-walkers, weather conditions and the grounds of the former mental hospital partially formed and deformed the atmospheric qualities of the artistic research event. These qualities were experienced through corporeal attuning influenced by the Skinner Releasing Technique, a somatic movement method. The article proposes a singular way of approaching the possibilities of corporeal openness and sensibility in a choreographic process in which, illuminated by, among others, the notions of threshold and limit, one becomes a stranger to oneself by surrendering oneself to atmospheric intensities. This artistic research study adopts a phenomenological approach, drawing mainly on the ideas of Jean-Luc Nancy, Mikel Dufrenne and Emmanuel Levinas.


1948 ◽  
Vol 94 (394) ◽  
pp. 99-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. C. Webster

The mental hospital of to-day has developed in stages from the earliest of which we have any particulars.Progress in planning and design has been gradual, with periods during which it has been pronounced. Each period has shown an advance in the lay-out and detailed arrangement of the buildings to meet the coincident advance in methods of care and treatment of the patients.


1939 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 519-521

On 31 January 1938, Sir James Crichton-Browne died a few months after his 97th birthday. In him the Royal Society lost its oldest Fellow, both in age and in membership, for he was elected Fellow in 1883, Charles Darwin being one of his proposers. His father, Dr W. A. F. Browne, who was the first Medical Superintendent of the Crichton Royal Mental Hospital at Dumfries, was largely responsible for the high standard of care and treatment of the insane for which this institution has since been famous ; later he became Commissioner in Lunacy in Scotland. It was therefore not surprising that after qualifying in medicine in Edinburgh University at the age of 22, his son decided to devote himself to the study of mental disorders. After serving in junior posts in various county Mental Hospitals he was appointed in 1866 Medical Superintendent of the West Riding Asylum, at Wakefield, a post he held until 1875. It was here his most valuable researches and pioneering work was done.


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.


1962 ◽  
Vol 108 (452) ◽  
pp. 59-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Barr ◽  
D. Golding ◽  
R. W. Parnell

The statistics on mental hospitals published by the Ministry of Health (1957) show that the average length of stay for admissions to mental hospitals decreased in the period 1952–1956. According to the Registrar-General's Mental Health Supplement (1961) there was an average saving, between 1951 and 1958, of sixteen days for men and thirteen days for women, among patients staying less than one year. But these figures for stay only relate to the patients discharged each year, irrespective of the year of their admission, and furthermore we do not know what happens to particular groups such, for example, as schizophrenics. Although remarkable changes are occurring at the present time, study of them is hampered by lack of appropriate and up-to-date information.


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