“WHAT DID THEY DO ALL DAY?” PATIENT WORK, PSYCHIATRY AND SOCIETY IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND, c.1918-1939

This study compares patient occupation in English and French mental hospitals between 1918 and 1939, a period that witnessed the transfer of new ideas concerning occupational therapy from Germany and the USA. Examining the different socio-economic, cultural and medical influences on patient occupation in both metropolitan and provincial mental hospitals, the study assesses the varied rationale for its prescription by psychiatrists. It is argued that the different professional trajectories of French and English psychiatry led to different responses to the new theories of occupation. It is also argued that for the new methods of occupational therapy to be successfully introduced, certain conditions had to be met. These conditions, which included medical directorship of institutions, skilled nursing, a focus on active treatment rather than custodial care, favourable staff to patient ratios, adequate financial resources, and freedom from overcrowding, were met differently in France and England. The comparative methodology utilised in this study has suggested that French psychiatry’s close alliance with the more prestigious discipline of neurology led to an interpretation of mental disorder that did not embrace psychological methods of treatment, such as occupation, for acutely ill patients. In France, occupation in the form of work around the hospital remained the preserve of the chronically ill and convalescent patients, and continued to be regarded as an essential means of offsetting institutional running costs, as it had been before World War I. In England, on the other hand, occupational therapy was welcomed as an effective means of re-educating the mentally ill and of engaging patients at all stages of their illness.

Grantor dc:publisher

Oxford Brookes University

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Freebody, Jane

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ernst, Waltraud
• O’Hara, Glen
• Quirke, Viviane

Statement dc:rights

• All rights reserved

Language dc:language

en

DOI dc:identifier

https://doi.org/10.24384/0756-mv82

OAI identifier oai:identifier

tle:79f511da-9eb5-4191-abc7-07fdf2dac6a6:d6bd9758-527a-46cd-bfe2-c433766e8fca:1