3 - The three mental hospitals

Summary

The medical, nursing and occupational-therapy staff at all three hospitals were very willing to collaborate in the study. Much of the material collected was descriptive as well as quantitative and some of it will be presented in Chapter 8. However, the book would be incomplete without a general account of the hospitals themselves and, in particular, of the policies and intentions of the most influential people—the physician superintendents. We therefore asked Dr Barton, Dr Freudenberg and Dr Macmillan to write a brief account of their hospitals and the policies they had consciously followed in trying to structure the social environment. We specially asked them to add a note on priorities, since it is perfectly plain that no one could attempt to make every department of the hospital function in an optimum way with the limited resources available. Their accounts are not edited, but some standard information on obvious indices such as catchment area and bed-occupancy is given first.

Mapperley Hospital, built in 1880, had 940 beds at the end of 1959 and had reduced its numbers by 300 during the previous eight years. The main hospital had been divided into a male and a female side in 1960. On the ground floor of the female side there were two main admission wards and a sick ward for medical and surgical treatment and a ward for elderly patients. On the ground floor of the male side there were two main admission wards and a sick ward for medical and surgical cases.