Annual report of the Board of Control to the Lord Chancellor : 1952.

Date:
1952
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Annual report of the Board of Control to the Lord Chancellor : 1952. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/10 (page 3)
    THE THIRTY-NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF CONTROL FOR THE YEAR 1952 To the Right Honourable The Lord High Chancellor. My Lord, In pursuance of section 162 of the Lunacy Act, 1890, we beg to submit the following Report: — Introduction This Report refers briefly to the condition of mental hospitals and other institutional accommodation for the mentally ill (but not for the mentally defective) in England and Wales, and to the care of such patients. Since the coming into force of the National Health Service Act, 1946, the Minister of Health has become responsible for providing and maintaining mental hospitals and hospitals for the mentally defective. The Annual Report of the Minister to Parliament now includes sections on Mental Health with statistics relating both to mental illness and to mental deficiency. A ccommodation On the 31st December, 1952, there were 148,123 patients under care under the provisions of the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts, 1890, to 1930. There were 212 patients in Naval and Military Hospitals, 122 Broad¬ moor* patients in mental hospitals, and 896 in Broadmoor Institution itself. The total number of patients notified to us as under treatment for mental illness was, therefore, 149,353. The number of patients in mental hospitals, excluding those which were formerly public assistance institutionsf, increased by 1,413, during 1952 to 137,039 (including 80 patients outside the provisions of the Acts), repre¬ senting an annual average increase during the past four years of 1,112. Calculated upon standards of space prescribed by the Ministry of Health, accommodation was provided in these hospitals for 123,387 patients, or 519 fewer than at the end of 1951. The difference is due to the fact that one Regional Hospital Board did not complete its reassessment of mental hospital bedspace on the basis of the prescribed standards until 1952. 'Some of this accommodation is still not in use. Beds diverted to other services numbered 997 and bedspace for 1,233 patients was awaiting restora¬ tion, renovation or repairs, while 1,640 beds could not be used owing to shortage of staff, representing in all a loss of 3,870 beds., It follows that there were at the end of 1952 in the 107 mental hospitals in question 17,522 more patients than those hospitals were designed, according to prescribed standards, to receive. The extent of this overcrowding varies in different hospitals. Where the overcrowding is most marked, it becomes difficult properly to classify or to treat separately in appropriate wards patients suffering from different types and in different stages of mental illness. Over¬ crowding may also affect the comfort and the recreations of many patients: beds have to be placed unsuitably in parts of the day-rooms or in corridors and, in one instance, it has been found necessary to use the hospital recreation hall as a dormitory for women patients. * Patients detained under the Acts relating to criminal lunatics. f A number of former public health or poor-law hospitals now vested in the Minister or Health are designated and used as mental hospitals for aged and chronic patients.