Desegregation Of The Mentally Ill

Out Of Print... Study of the development and effects of the post-war trend for providing comprehensive psychiatric care to the mentally ill from specialist pyschiatric units within general hospitals. Since the second World War and since the establishment of the National Health Service there has been a revolution in the treatment of the mentally ill and in the related hospital administration. Previously the trend had been to segregate the mentally ill from the rest of the community by legal measures and to confine them to remote institutions for custodial care. The present book, based on University research, investigates one of the most radical of the new ventures in psychiatric care, namely, a comprehensive service of in-patient and out patient care extended to the mentally ill by a psychiatric unit which is an integral part of a general hospital and the centre of a well-defined and accessible catchment area. The book gives a valuable outline history of this new type of hospital organization, coupled with evidence as to its effectiveness. It describes a representative sample of an annual intake of new psychiatric patients into such a hospital, their management over the subsequent four years and how they and their families fared. The findings indicate that the correct line of advance has been found and that with this type of psychiatric support the mentally ill can, in the main, work or live contained in their local community without the trauma of compulsory admission to mental hospital or long periods of withdrawal, and without any undue burden on other services or on their families. The authors demonstrate the preference of the public for services of this type and emphasize the need for close medical and social collaboration if such a service is to be maintained.