Mental health at Tokanui in the early years

Tokanui was the first hospital to be built entirely to the villa design, and as such, its physically separate wards presented considerable opportunity for the classification and treatment of patients. Piecing together information contained in the remaining records, this chapter describes the formative years at Tokanui, during which not only a hospital, but also a community was established. The narrative which follows tells of buildings erected, land broken, cultivated and beautified, of hard physical labour and trying conditions. Above all, it is a narrative of the people who worked and lived, however fleetingly, at Tokanui and without whom the hospital would not have had a purpose. As the first new hospital to be built after provincial time, Tokanui, in many respects, led the way in developments made in the accommodation and treatment of the psychiatrically ill and those with intellectual disability

Social interactions of chronic psychiatric patients in organized ward recreational programs

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Female Refugees in Germany: Language, Education and Employment

Das BAMF-Forschungszentrum legt eine neue Kurzanalyse zur Situation geflüchteter Frauen in Deutschland vor. Dabei werden wissenschaftliche Erhebungen mit Daten aus Verwaltungsstatistiken verknüpft. Die Ergebnisse zeigen: Geflüchtete Frauen sind hoch motiviert zur gesellschaftlichen Teilhabe, benötigen aber aufgrund von "Startnachteilen" besondere Unterstützung.The BAMF's Research Centre has presented a new brief analysis of the situation facing refugee women in Germany, linking research findings with data obtained from administrative statistics. The results reveal that refugee women are highly motivated when it comes to participation in society, but that they need special support because of "initial disadvantages"

Mental Health Nurse Prescribing: Challenges in Theory and Practice

This article addresses the historical context of mental health nursing and its relationship to nurse prescribing.; examines some of the theoretical and philosophical forces that have molded modern mental health nursing, discussing the tensions between the medical model and the psychosocial models favoured by many mental health nurse academics and practitioners over the last forty years; and finally discusses the issues and challenges around commencing prescribing in practice, especially when nurse prescribing is not integral to the practitioner’s role. The article intends to examine the theoretical basis for mental health nurse prescribing, to discuss some of the theoretical tensions which are implicit; and describes briefly the author’s own experience as a recently qualified nurse prescriber

Complexity and coherence

Leslie Topp traces the emergence of the asylum mortuary as an architectural challenge. Drawing on new archival research, Complexity and Coherence: The Challenge of the Asylum Mortuary in Central Europe, 1898–1908 unpacks the highly fraught combination of scientific practices, death rituals, and psychiatric strategies that made up the mortuary's program. Topp analyzes three mortuary buildings in new psychiatric institutions at Vienna, Mauer-Öhling (Lower Austria), and Kroměříž (Moravia). Far from conforming to an established type, each building represents a radically different approach to the challenge of rendering the program's abrupt juxtapositions meaningful and coherent. In each case the building is conceived within the force field of Wagner School modernism, but the contrasting built results show the diversity of that modernism pushed to its limits by the complexity of the program's requirements and associations

The rise of mental health nursing: a history of psychiatric care in Dutch asylums, 1890-1920

Examining the relations between the rise of scientific psychiatry and the emergence of mental health nursing in Dutch asylums, this study analyses the social relationships of class, gender and religion that structured asylum care in the Netherlands around 1900. Drawing on archival collections of four Dutch asylums, the book highlights the gendered nature of mental health nursing politics. Seeking to model the asylum after the forceful example of the general hospital, psychiatrists introduced new somatic treatments and designed mental nurse training which aimed at creating a nursing staff skilled in somatic care. The training system, based on the projected image of the civilized, middle-class female nurse, bringing competence and compassion to the care of the mentally ill, created new opportunities for women, while at the same time restricting the role of men in nursing. Capturing the contradictory realities of hospital-oriented asylum care, the book illustrates the social complexity of the care of the mentally ill and forms an important addition to the historiography on European psychiatry

The Rise of Mental Health Nursing

Examining the relations between the rise of scientific psychiatry and the emergence of mental health nursing in Dutch asylums, this study analyses the social relationships of class, gender and religion that structured asylum care in the Netherlands around 1900. Drawing on archival collections of four Dutch asylums, the book highlights the gendered nature of mental health nursing politics. Seeking to model the asylum after the forceful example of the general hospital, psychiatrists introduced new somatic treatments and designed mental nurse training which aimed at creating a nursing staff skilled in somatic care. The training system, based on the projected image of the civilized, middle-class female nurse, bringing competence and compassion to the care of the mentally ill, created new opportunities for women, while at the same time restricting the role of men in nursing. Capturing the contradictory realities of hospital-oriented asylum care, the book illustrates the social complexity of the care of the mentally ill and forms an important addition to the historiography on European psychiatry.The Rise of Mental Health Nursing onderzoekt de tegenstrijdigheden in de op het ziekenhuis georiënteerde inrichtingszorg, die rond 1900 opkwam. Bovendien illustreert het boek de sociale complexiteit van de psychiatrische zorg. Op basis van archiefmateriaal uit vier Nederlandse psychiatrische inrichtingen onderzocht Geertje Boschma de sociale verbanden die de psychiatrische verpleging rond 1900 kenmerkten. De introductie van nieuwe somatische behandelingsmethoden door psychiaters creëerde destijds een vraag naar verplegend personeel dat geschoold was in somatische zorg. Het opleidingsmodel, dat (overwegend mannelijke) psychiaters ontwikkelden, was gebaseerd op het beeld van de beschaafde vrouwelijke verpleegster uit de middenklasse die competentie en compassie in de zorg verenigden. De nieuwe kansen die hiermee gecreëerd werden voor vrouwen legden tegelijkertijd een beperking op aan de rol van mannen binnen de verpleging

Themes in Scottish asylum culture : the hospitalisation of the Scottish asylum 1880-1914

Having embarked on a vast journey of asylum construction from the 1860s, Scottish mental health care faced uncertainty as to the appropriate role of the asylum by the 1880s. Whereas the mid century was dominated by official efforts to lessen the asylum's custodial image, late Victorian asylum culture encompassed both traditional and new themes in the treatment and care of patients. These themes included hospitalisation, traditional moral approaches, and wider social influences such as the poor law, philanthropy, endemic disease and Victorian ethics. In an age of medical advance, Scottish asylum doctors and administrators introduced hospitalisation in a bid to enhance the status of asylum culture. The hospitalisation of the asylum was attempted through architectural change, transitions in mental nursing and the pursuit of laboratory research. Yet as a movement, hospitalisation was largely ornamental. Although hospitalisation paved the way for impressive new buildings, there was little additional funding to improve asylum infrastructure by raising nursing standards or to conduct laboratory research work. While the Commissioners in Lunacy proclaimed `hospitalisation' to be a distinctive part of the Scottish approach of mental health care, the policy's origins lay not with the policy makers but with individual medical superintendents. Although hospitalisation became an official approach by the General Board of Lunacy, like any other theme in asylum culture, the extent of hospitalisation's implementation relied on the support of individual doctors and local circumstance. Despite this attempt to emulate modern medicine, moral management rather than hospitalisation methods continued as the fundamental approach of treatment and control in most institutions. The main components of moral management were work and a system of rewards (implemented through liberties and accommodation privileges). The process of mental recovery continued to be linked to industriousness and behaviour. The thesis acknowledges the impact of local forces and wider society upon attitudes towards mental health care, such as the economically driven district lunacy boards and to a lessening extent the parochial boards and philanthropy. In viewing the asylum within the wider context of Scottish society, the asylum shared some characteristics with other Victorian institutions. Finally, although the patient's autonomy within the system should not be overplayed, the asylum doctor was also affected by the patients' co-operation with treatment and the involvement of family and friends in admission

“An unsuitable job for a woman? Gender and mental health nursing.”

On the evening of Wednesday 12th May 1920 a demonstration took place in the city of Wakefield, in West Yorkshire. According to the ‘Wakefield Express,’ a large procession with banners flying, and with the city’s band at its head, marched through the streets of Wakefield to the Green Market, where a large crowd had assembled. Two lorries acted as platforms for a series of speakers. Speakers on the platform included union officials, local councillors and representatives from the Discharged Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Association. Mr GW Newsome, secretary of the Wakefield branch of the National Asylum Workers’ Union (NAWU), proposed the following motion, ‘That this mass meeting … deplores the continued employment of female labour in male wards at the West Riding Mental Hospital – work which prior to the war was performed by men.