The fundamental underpinning themes of the Royal Commission that led to the 1959 Mental Health Act were:
Changes in the approach to mental illness
The fundamental
underpinning themes of the Royal Commission that led to the 1959 Mental Health
Act were:
·
that mental disorders should be regarded in much the same
way as physical illness and disability
·
that hospitals for mental illness should be run as nearly as
possible like those for physical disorders.
These themes were
further developed in the 1960s with the development of ‘community care’. The
main features of the policy were:
·
that hospital treatment should be in psychiatric units in
district general hospitals
·
that as much care and treatment as possible should be
provided outside hospitals.
The development of
mental health wards in the middle of general medical wards proved problematic,
and the approach is now to situate such wards on the periphery of the district
general hospital site or on a dedicated site. This last theme has been the
focus of much recent policy development, firstly with the development of
community mental health teams to support patients in the community and, more
recently, with the publication of the National Service Framework for Mental
Health, the establishment of crisis intervention and home treatment teams.
These teams are designed to obviate, wherever pos-sible, the need to admit
people in crisis and, if admission if required, to expedite their discharge
from hospital.
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