Mental hospitals and the public : the need for closer co-operation / by Lt.-Colonel J.R. Lord, C.B.E., M.D., F.R.C.P. Edin.

  • Lord, J. R. (John Robert), 1874-1931
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Mental hospitals and the public : the need for closer co-operation / by Lt.-Colonel J.R. Lord, C.B.E., M.D., F.R.C.P. Edin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    lis estrangement has never been so marked in Scotland as in England. To-day arcely, if at all, exists in the former country, which fact is largely due to the oughly systematic teaching of psychiatry at the medical schools and general itals in association with the mental hospitals, which are attached to them for purpose. die isolation of psychiatry from the main stream of medicine would in a large sure have been prevented, and the study and treatment of mental disorders Id have had that mutual collaboration and co-operation within the fold of ral medicine which has been so beneficial to all its other branches, die country willingly pays about £8,000,000 a year for the upkeep of the general itals with their 46,000 beds, and had it adopted a voluntary system of mental itals a more advanced psychiatry might have unloaded by several millions the ant cost (£7,000,000 for about 105,000 mental hospital beds) by having a con- ’ably less number of chronic insane to support. sow to come to the present-day attitude of the public to the mental hospitals, his is not a problem which stands alone : it is bound up with that of the ionship of psychiatry to the law, of psychiatry to general medicine, and of the ic mental hospitals to the general hospitals. All these factors have adversely sted the progress of psychiatry. Not only so, but every one of the foregoing )rs have added their quota to that continued lack of active interest of the public rally in those mentally afflicted and in the welfare and wrork of our public tal hospitals. And, furthermore, what is a matter of still greater regret is that ic opinion has never really emancipated itself from the thraldom of medieval Lght in its ideas of insanity. Chis is very evident from the attitude which the public take up in regard to those tiarged from mental hospitals and the disinclination to employ them. Che medical officers of mental hospitals are also keenly aware of it from the ess the friends of patients show on their first visit. It is often difficult, if not Dssible, to make them believe that there is no disgrace in being mentally ’ted, that mental disorder should be looked upon in the same light as physical rder and that the ideals and functions of mental hospitals and general hospitals fundamentally the same. They are therefore often difficult to satisfy, being icious, over-anxious, querulous and imbued with wrong notions, not only as to jaature of insanity, but also as to the nature of the work of the mental hospital, b of them soon learn, however, that things are not so bad as they had thought; ed, as a rule, the relationship between the hospital staff and the patients’ ids becomes most cordial and, but for the publicity which wrould be given to the
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