title: Resilience of institutional culture: mental nursing in a decade of radical change.
abstract: Mental nursing has continued to be neglected in the history of psychiatry. This paper considers the impact of a decade of radical developments on the role and outlook of nurses in British mental hospitals during the 1930s. The Mental Treatment Act 1930 introduced voluntary admission for early, supposedly treatable cases, although there was paucity of effective treatment. In the mid-1930s shock therapies, administered with great enthusiasm by asylum doctors, promised to cure insanity by physical means. Although these were important milestones in the progress of psychiatry, for the majority of nurses and patients life continued much as before. Despite advances in training, working conditions and therapeutic activity, the institutional culture of nursing was remarkably resilient to the forces of change.
authors.affiliation: King's College London.
authors.forename: Niall
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: McCrae
mesh_terms: D004739:England; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric / Q000266:history* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D011568:Psychiatric Nursing / Q000266:history* / Q000592:standards; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history* / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000592:standards; D014852:Wales
keywords: 20th century; England and Wales; institutional culture; legislation; mental hospitals; nursing; shock treatments