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Mental health nursing in the 1950s and 1960s revisited
Author(s) -
Nolan P.,
Hopper >.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.69
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1365-2850
pISSN - 1351-0126
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2850.1997.00070.x
Subject(s) - dynamism , mental health , national service framework , context (archaeology) , politics , government (linguistics) , mental health care , nursing , closure (psychology) , health care , public relations , psychology , political science , medicine , psychiatry , sociology , history , law , linguistics , philosophy , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics
From the post‐War period to the 1960s, immense changes took place in the philosophy, organization and delivery of mental health care in the UK. These changes were driven by the financial burden that Bevan's National Health Service imposed on the British Government, by the dynamism and vision of psychiatrists and mental health nurses returning from the War, and by a new social and cultural consciousness, which put minority groups such as the mentally ill onto the political agenda. This paper seeks to explore some of these complex interactions and to show how the closure of mental hospitals was the inevitable outcome of movements both inside psychiatry and far beyond it. An awareness of the historical context of mental health care can assist planners and providers to avoid the many pitfalls that have been made by our predecessors.