Mental Health and Social Policy, 1845-1959 by Kathleen Jones

Author:Kathleen Jones [Jones, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Reference, General, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781136279027
Google: 8eyzAAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

Developments 1930–9

The Report of the Board of Control for 1930 showed great satisfaction with the achievements of the new Act. It stressed that most of its provisions were permissive, and that ‘it might be described in the main as an enabling measure’. The Conference which followed had been organized with the intention of encouraging the local authorities to use the Act to the fullest extent.

Accommodation for Voluntary and Temporary Patients

Although the Act had resulted in an immediate and startling increase in the number of out-patient clinics, little progress had been made in the task of setting aside special accommodation for the new categories of patients. This was partly a matter of cost. Lay committees were ready enough to agree to setting up psychiatric out-patient clinics, which required little capital expenditure, and represented an obvious saving of hospitalization costs. A new unit for voluntary patients, on the other hand, was a heavy charge on capital funds; and it was by no means easy to prove that the ultimate result of building such a unit would be to save money, because the patients would get better more quickly.

Another reason for this slowness of development was that many psychiatrists, like Dr. Beaton of Portsmouth, were not convinced as to the necessity for, or advisability of, special units. While they were agreed that beds should certainly be provided for voluntary patients, and that they should have the best treatment available, they felt that special accommodation would improve treatment for these patients at the expense of the certified patients. The stigma of certification would be increased; and there would be a tendency for the new units to be developed as ‘show places’ at the expense of the rest of the hospital.

Development of the use of voluntary procedure for admission was at first distinctly unequal. By the end of 1931, one area5 could boast that 45 per cent of all admissions were voluntary; yet another, containing a total population of over four million people, had not admitted one voluntary patient by the summer of 1932.6 In the subsequent years, however, voluntary admissions rose steadily. In 1932, the overall figure was 7 per cent of total admissions. By 1936, it was 26·9 per cent; and by 1938, it had risen to 35·2 per cent, while fifteen hospitals were admitting more than half their new patients in this way.

Conditions in Mental Hospitals

The re-constituted Board of Control was waging a vigorous battle for better conditions for all mental hospital patients. Annual Reports in the nineteen-thirties show a capacity for independent assessment, lively comment, and occasionally stinging rebuke. A note on the necessity for the provision of mental hospital libraries runs:

‘Because patients are allowed to read anything, it must not be assumed that they will be content with any rubbish produced by past piety or present ineptitude…. A generation accustomed to Edgar Wallace will not, even in dementia, take kindly to Victorian sentimentality, or the “life and remains” of eminent divines.’

They suggested that the Red Cross of the local county

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