Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T03:52:11.921Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Why are the mentally handicapped still admitted to hospital?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Leila B. Cooke*
Affiliation:
Stoke Park Hospital, Stapleton, Bristol BS16 1QU
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Stoke Park Hospital Group in Bristol has been providing a service to mentally handicapped people and their families since 1909. The nature and extent of the service has changed significantly between then and now, largely due to changes in Government policy, first laid out in the 1971 white paper Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped. The changing nature of the service was highlighted in Carter's paper in 1984, in which he examined all admissions to the Group over ten years. He found an increasing use of the hospitals for short-term care, particularly for those patients with a superimposed psychiatric disorder, and a continuing, albeit reducing, demand for long-term care for some patients. He concluded that the hospital would continue to have an important role to play in the evolving pattern of care.

Type
Original articles
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1992

References

Ballinger, B. R., Ballinger, C. B., Reid, A. H. et al (1991) The psychiatric symptoms, diagnoses and care needs of 100 mentally handicapped patients. British Journal of Psychiatry, 158, 251254.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carter, G. (1984) Why are the mentally handicapped admitted to hospital? A ten-year survey. British Journal of Psychiatry, 145, 283288.Google Scholar
Day, K. A. (1985) Psychiatric disorder in the middle-aged and elderly mentally handicapped. British Journal of Psychiatry, 147, 660667.Google Scholar
Dickinson, M. J. & Singh, I. (1991) Mental handicap and the new long stay. Psychiatric Bulletin, 15, 334335.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillberg, C., Persson, E., Grufman, M. et al (1986) Psychiatric disorders in mildly and severely mentally retarded urban children and adolescents: epidemiological aspects. British Journal of Psychiatry, 149, 6874.Google Scholar
Rao, J. M. (1987) Trends in short term and long term care admissions to a hospital of the mentally handicapped and the influence of socio-economic, familial and clinical factors. Social Psychiatry, 22, 118122.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.