The decade following the end of World War II saw a progressive rise in the admission rate to mental hospitals in this country. The population of mental hospitals rose to a peak of 152,000 in England and Wales in 1954, since when there has been a steady decline. These fluctuations have been analysed by such authors as Norton (1961) and Tooth and Brooke (1961). The latter attributed the more recent decline to increased efficiency of treatment and rehabilitation, and predicted a continued fall so reducing the mental hospital patients by about 1970 that they would be covered by an allocation of 1 · 8 beds per thousand population. Maclay (1963) believed this prediction to err if anything on the conservative side and the Ministry of Health (1962) based its plans for psychiatric beds upon this ratio. In these plans the Ministry accepted the thesis that short-stay psychiatric patients should preferably be treated in general hospital units near to their homes whilst patients needing a longer hospital stay should be catered for in specialized hospitals for that purpose. The prediction in the Ministry of Health's Hospital Plan (1962) that there would be a steadily declining mental hospital po
📖 افتح في inklap 🔗 DOI 📮 اطلب بحثاً