Large-scale long-stay hospitals for people with learning disabilities have now virtually disappeared as policies and philosophies of care and support have changed. Developers have bought the land and transformed the areas they once occupied into housing, supermarkets, care homes and other enterprises (Binnery, 1995). However, these hospitals live on in people?s memories.
Thinking back, were you ever aware of asylums and what were known as ‘mental handicap hospitals?? Did they play a part in your community, or perhaps influence your family?s life? Do you ever hear people talking about such a hospital near to where you live?
Jot down some brief notes. You may like to use your Learning Journal.
Some asylums or mental handicap hospitals were built within city suburbs, although many were sited far from the large conurbations. And although these institutions dominated the landscape, they tended to be highly self-contained, difficult to get into and sometimes difficult to get out of.
In some communities, the local long-stay hospital was the main employer of labour. Family members worked there for generations. Meanwhile, other families may have had a relative who lived for many years as a hospital patient. Sometimes this would have meant regular and frequent visiting, sometimes not.
People today may have no knowledge at all that such hospitals ever existed. In some cases they have disappeared from the map. Earlier generations of children may have known about them more as a threat: in North London, they might have been told that they would ‘end up in Colney Hatch?; in Newcastle upon Tyne, it was Cox Lodge; and in Walsall a mother might have said ‘You?ll have me in Burntwood?, if a child didn?t behave. All these places were local long-stay hospitals. Someone who read an early draft of this unit wrote in to say that: ‘The Retreat, York is some 19 miles from where I?ve always lived and I have childhood memories of it being somewhere you never went.? The Retreat was considered to be a rather better long-stay hospital.
Another person remembers:
… growing up in the 1950s between two large hospitals in the countryside of north-east England, one a mental handicap hospital (for people with learning disabilities) the other a ‘mental hospital? (providing psychiatric treatment). Occasionally someone might escape and pass us as we played in the fields and woods. More frequently we saw groups of patients from the mental handicap hospital being taken for walks or to work in the fields. As a child I could see that they looked different from other grown-ups. They seemed very shy. The women wore ankle socks, their clothes didn?t look very smart, and the men and the women walked separately in a crocodile along the road, sometimes holding each other?s hands.
Later in this unit we will explore in greater detail the contribution which remembering and personal experience can make to what we know about the past. Before that, however, you might find it helpful to look at one way of making sense of what we know and learn about a place like Lennox Castle Hospital. To do this, you will be looking at the work of Erving Goffman, who identified the characteristics of what he called the ‘total institution?.
Download and read the following paper ‘Total Institutions? by K. Jones and A.J Fowles from the link provided below. As you do so, make notes on:
Figure 3 A view of the inside of one of the women?s wards at Lennox CastleLong description
Figure 4 Carpet making in one of the men?s workshops at Lennox CastleLong descriptionGoffman analysed life in a wide range of institutions, including prisons, boarding schools, army barracks and care homes, as well as long-stay hospitals. The box below gives some further information about his work.
You can judge how helpful his perspective is as you work on Activity 3.
Erving Goffman was a Canadian sociologist whose ideas have greatly influenced the development of sociology and have spread further into thinking more generally.
He was particularly interested in how people interact in face-to-face situations, how they come to understand what to say and do ? what is expected and what is not allowed ? and how, in what they say and do, they influence others and are influenced by them. One of his most important books is Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, which was published in 1961. In order to carry out his research, he worked as a ‘visiting scientist? at a hospital for people with mental health problems. From this, he developed his idea of the ‘total institution? to explain how people living and working there responded and conformed to the rules and structures imposed by the organisation.
What kind of notes did you make when you read the Jones and Fowles text? A way of making notes known as ‘mind mapping? is found helpful by many people. In Figure 5 you can see an example of mind map notes for the Jones and Fowles chapter. I made the notes using free mind mapping software that I found on the internet. Have a look at the mind map in Figure 5 to see whether this looks like a way of note making that might suit you. Start from the middle and work outwards. Setting out notes this way helps to bring out the structure of a chapter, or a unit, or a talk. It makes details easier to remember, by putting them in meaningful clusters. But of course it takes time to create the diagram, so you have to decide whether the investment is worthwhile.
Figure 5 Mind map notes made by Jones and Fowles
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