Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T15:56:02.334Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Industrial Units in Psychiatric Hospitals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

H. B. Kidd
H. B. Kidd*
Affiliation:
Towers Hospital, Leicester
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The recent development of industrial therapy (Early 1960 and 1963; Wadsworth 1958, 1961, 1962 and Smith 1963) in British mental hospitals reflects our current therapeutic optimism and takes advantage of a period of full employment in industry. Industrial therapy has been found to be an important weapon in the prevention or cure of institutional neurosis (Barton 1959). It is, of course, well known that during the past two decades institutional neurosis has been markedly reduced by a more permissive and non-authoritarian approach to patients, including amongst other things greater freedom, more enlightened nursing and the use of group techniques and occupational therapy in various forms. However, if patients are to be rehabilitated and the best use made of their personality resources, their lives within the hospital should be as close as possible to normal life in the community, and it follows that like normal citizens they should be employed at productive, useful and satisfying work for which they should receive proper economic rewards. This work may be in a factory setting, but need not exclude in some circumstances work in certain hospital departments. However, in order to prevent confusion the term industrial therapy should only be used when “patients are employed in factory-type work under medical and nursing supervision which aims at their rehabilitation and/or resettlement, the nature of the work being related to the needs of the individual patient, giving him both psychological and economic satisfaction”. It appears that in the United States the traditional employment of patients in hospital departments without pay (except token payments in kind) is now being called industrial therapy; it is likely, however that American interest in the totally different British concept of industrial therapy will lead there to a change in approach. It should, therefore, be stressed that an integral part of industrial therapy is financial reward for work done according to ability, motivation and production. Thus “economic satisfaction” is an essential part of any definition.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 111 , Issue 481 , December 1965 , pp. 1205 - 1209
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1965 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Barton, R. (1959). “Institutional Neurosis.” Wright and Sons.Google Scholar
Early, D. (1960). Lancet, ii, 754–757.Google Scholar
Early, D. (1963). Lancet, i, 435–436.Google Scholar
Hutt, S. J., Crookes, T. G., and Glancy, L. J. (1964). B. J. Psychiat., 111, 270–282.Google Scholar
Industrial Therapy Organization Ltd. (1963). Annual Report.Google Scholar
Sheffield Regional Hospital Board (1962). Report of Committee on Rehabilitation.Google Scholar
Smith, S. (1963). Brit. Hosp. & Soc. Ser.J., lxxxiii, 1589–91.Google Scholar
Wadsworth, W. V. et al. (1958). Lancet, ii, 896–897.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wadsworth, W. V. et al. (1961). Lancet, ii, 593–595.Google Scholar
Wadsworth, W. V. et al. (1962). Lancet, ii, 1375–1376.Google Scholar
Wadsworth, W. V. et al. (1962). J. Ment. Sci., 108, 300–303.Google Scholar
Wadsworth, W. V. et al. (1962). J. Ment. Sci., 108, 780–785.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.