Soanes, Stephen (2011) Rest and restitution : convalescence and the public mental hospital in England, 1919–39. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

Previous histories have tended to look beyond the asylum for innovations in
early twentieth-century mental healthcare. In contrast, this thesis appraises
the mental hospital as the nexus for a new approach to convalescent care
and makes the case for a more integrated conception of institutional and
community care in the interwar period. Despite a concentration of
convalescent facilities in certain areas, this study argues that the period
between 1919 and 1939 witnessed the emergence of a more standardised
and coordinated model of care that traversed institutional boundaries.
Consequently, it challenges a prevailing view that sees asylum care as
separate from developments in borderline care in this period. It is
demonstrated that public mental hospitals after 1919 widely added new
convalescent villas within their grounds, whilst voluntary organisations
diversified and extended their community-based cottage homes. This thesis
explores the reasons for this expansion and seeks to explain the functions it
served those who planned, managed and utilised mental convalescent
homes.
It is argued that those with professional interests in the mental hospital
focused on the „modern‟ convalescent villa partly as a strategic response to
the low status of mental hospitals in the 1920s, as well as to alleviate
overcrowding, and oversee recovery in managed and healthful
environments. The spatial and rhetorical connection between the admission
hospital and the convalescent villa allowed these interests to claim they
formed part of a broader movement of mental hygiene and early treatment.
In contrast, patient representations of cottage homes offer an alternative
perspective of convalescence as a holiday and break from social demands.
Particular attention is paid to the case of the London County Council.
The analysis focuses on descriptions of convalescent homes found in
organisational records. These are compared with plans and photographs to
make sense of the uses such homes served.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Psychiatric hospitals -- England -- History -- 20th century, Psychiatric hospital patients -- England -- History -- 20th century, Hospitals, Convalescent -- England -- History -- 20th century, Convalescence
Official Date:	January 2011
Dates:	Date Event January 2011 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Thomson, Matthew; Marland, Hilary
Sponsors:	Wellcome Trust (London, England)
Extent:	ix, 410 leaves : illustrations, maps
Language:	eng

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