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Anecdotal evidence of the testimonies of patients who received treatments for sexual deviations and medical attitudes towards them are scattered in the recorded accounts of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, intersex and queer/questioning (GLBTIQ) people. This book examines the plight of men who were institutionalised in British mental hospitals to receive 'treatment' for homosexuality and transvestism, and the perceptions and actions of the men and women who nursed them. It explores why the majority of the nurses followed orders in administering the treatment - in spite of the zero success-rate in 'straightening out' queer men - but also why a small number surreptitiously defied their superiors by engaging in fascinating subversive behaviours. The book is specifically about the treatments developed for sexual deviations in the UK. Transvestism was also treated fairly widely; however, not to the same extent as homosexuality. After an examination of the oppression and suppression of the sexual deviant, the introduction of aversion therapies for sexual deviance is considered. During the 1930s-1950s, mental health care witnessed a spirit of 'therapeutic optimism' as new somatic treatments and therapies were introduced in mental hospitals. The book also examines the impact these had on the role of mental nurses and explores how such treatments may have essentially normalised nurses to implement painful and distressing 'therapeutic' interventions . The book interprets the testimonies of these 'subversive nurses'. Finally, it explores the inception of 'nurse therapists' and discusses their role in administering aversion therapy.
under psychiatric geneticist Franz Kallmann explored these questions at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) Department of Medical Genetics. Their mental health project for deaf people established genetic and mental health care services that – for the first time in the US – considered deaf people a social minority who should receive care in their own, native sign language. Today, such health care services that consider the specific needs of linguistic or cultural minorities are relatively common in the US. Fifty years ago, however, this was a novelty
hospital is where the action is.4 This chapter briefly examines the origins and development of DGH units, and the concept of DGH psychiatry espoused by Kessel. It explores how the units in general, and Withington in particular, are situated within the broader history of post-war mental health care. Given their importance in policy terms, it is surprising that so little has been written about them. To date, the historiography has been particularly silent about their nurses. This chapter recognises that nurses were central to the running of the Withington unit, and seeks
, 1916–19’, 33–40. 143 Reid, Broken Men , 24; Long, Destigmatising Mental Illness? , 4. 144 Alice Brumby, ‘From “Pauper Lunatics” to “Rate-Aided Patients”: Removing the Stigma of Mental Health Care, 1888–1938’ (PhD Thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2015), 11
The Mansions in the Orchard project, funded by a Wellcome Trust People Award for Public Engagement, ran from September 2013 to March 2015. On behalf of the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, the authors carried out new historical research and documentation, alongside public engagement activities. The project addressed the largely undocumented twentieth-century history of inpatient mental health care in Britain through the
interesting link between efforts to resolve the early NHS staffing crisis in mental hospitals (informed by parallel initiatives across other branches of nursing) and the emergence of a distinctive critique of the asylum as a past, present and future locus of mental health care that had no counterpoint in discussions about other hospital facilities. It is, however, evident that the institutional model of care remained dominant, with the 1960s and early 1970s paradoxically seeing both a commitment to alternative models of service delivery and major investments in new and
within the National Asylum Workers’ Union (NAWU).5 Both scandals concerned the care and management of male asylum patients, not the vulnerable madwoman identified by Showalter. In turn, the scandals affected the status of psychiatric nurses and perceptions of mental illness and asylum patients. Analysis of these scandals illustrates how occupational struggles between different professional groups within the field of mental health care were fuelled in part by conflicting representations of mental illness, and in turn could generate stigmatising discourses which
National Archives, Kew, Richmond, Surrey (hereafter BNA), Lab 20/33, Ministry of Labour and National Service, ‘Liaison with Sutton Emergency Hospital: Special Psychiatric Centre’, note of a meeting held 19 August 1946. 19 Jones et al., ‘Work therapy’, p. 344. 20 See Vicky Long, ‘Rethinking post-war mental health care: Industrial therapy and the chronic mental patient in Britain’, Social History of Medicine, 26:4 (2013), 738–58, 756. 21 Maxwell Jones, ‘Industrial rehabilitation of mental patients still in hospital’, The Lancet, 268:6950 (1956), pp. 985–6. 22 BNA, FD 1
, the government ECT guidelines acknowledged ECT as an acceptable treatment, and from this time on ECT treatment gradually expanded again, although protests went on throughout the 1980s. In 1985, for example, the anti-psychiatric ‘Nuts Foundation’ in Nijmegen organised a public debate when ECT was reintroduced in Nijmegen University Hospital.44 The panel, which attracted over 200 attendees, also included a nurse, Ganny Boer. She was among a list of well-known public speakers on the topic, such as the provincial Inspector of Mental Health Care, and the Patient
and stopping smoking.6 Managers have also been advised to give a much higher priority to mental health issues and to tackle stress, bullying, harassment and the deep-seated culture of long working hours. The Boorman review sets out a number of models of ideal mental health care including Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust’s policy which trains managers to deal with staff’s mental health and Addenbrooke’s Hospital’s ‘Life’ scheme which offers staff poetry and painting competitions, book clubs, manicures and back massage.7 High rates of sickness absence in the nursing