A Statistical Study of Departures from a Mental Hospital

1970 ◽  
Vol 116 (530) ◽  
pp. 57-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward S. Stern

Various studies of the numbers of patients in mental hospitals have been made, e.g. Brooke (1963); General Register Office (1960); Gore and Jones (1961); Hassall, Spencer, and Cross (1965); Malzberg (1955); Norris (1959); Norton (1961); Registrar General (1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964); Tooth and Brooke (1961), but little attempt has been made to find whether these numbers are subject to natural law. In this paper I have tried to establish this. These researches have been made on the patients of the Central Hospital, Warwick, which has been in continuous use since 30 June 1852. The case sheets of the older patients are accessible; the recent ones are also personally known.

1956 ◽  
Vol 102 (428) ◽  
pp. 467-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera Norris

The handicap of the single as compared with the married state in respect of the first admission rates to mental hospitals has been demonstrated by several workers. Dayton (1939), Malzberg (1940) and 0degaard (1946), to mention but a few, have all shown that the admission rates for single persons are greater than those for married persons of the same age. Hospital first admission rates for mental disorders are more likely to give reliable estimates of the incidence of mental disease than are hospital rates for other types of illness, nevertheless hospital admissions are but a sample of the sick population in the community and, generally speaking, there is no means of knowing whether or not it is a representative sample of the total sick population. For this reason, in this paper it is only the effect of marital status on the hospital care of the mentally sick that it is to be considered. This appears to be a necessary restriction in view of the fact that the data analysed here relate only to hospital admissions, but ⊘degaard (1946) categorically stated, although his data, too, were derived from mental hospitals:“It is shown beyond doubt that the incidence of mental disease is much higher in the single than in the married, and that this ‘predominance of the single’ among our insane is no statistical figment caused by such factors as differences in age distribution or in the tendency to hospitalize the insane.”The purpose of this paper is not to discuss differential admission rates between single and married, although some data will be presented to show that the difference exists here as well as in Scandinavia and the United States, for I have dealt with that problem elsewhere.∗ The very great differences between the first admission rates for single and married persons led me to ask the question: “What other differences arise between single and married persons with respect to mental hospital care?” The data of a statistical study of mental hospital admissions which I have already completed provide some information on this point.


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.


1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Nemitz ◽  
Philip Bean

While conducting a study on the nature and extent of compulsory admissions to mental hospitals within the four London regional health authorities, discrepancies and inaccuracies were revealed in many of those mental hospital in-patient statistics. The nature and extent of some of these are examined. It is suggested that the value of such statistics for government planning must be questioned as is their value for research. It is recommended that a centralised system of collecting and collating such data be introduced as a matter of priority and that such a system be operated by the Mental Health Act Commission.


1928 ◽  
Vol 74 (306) ◽  
pp. 410-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabella A. Gillespie

Hitherto the treatment of post-encephalitis has been profoundly unsatisfactory, and for the most part only palliative.There are at present in mental hospitals some 200 cases; this is only a fraction of those not certified, and consists of an asocial class impossible to deal with outside a mental hospital.


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