Family Therapy In London Hospital

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31210, 7 November 1966, Page 2

Family Therapy In London Hospital

(New Zealand Press Association! AUCKLAND, November 4. A psychiatric hospital in London where mothers can live with their children while receiving treatment was described in Auckland today by its medical director (Dr. T. F. Main) who is in New Zealand as the first H. B. Williams memorial travelling professor in psychiatry.

The professorship was established with a £20,000 gift from an anonymous donor. The hospital is the Cassel Hospital for functional nervous disorders. Mothers with mental Illness who had young children were encouraged to bring the children into hospital with them. They lived in their own rooms in the hospital in what Dr. Main called “homely disorder” —hospital standards of tidyness were not demanded.

The children brought their own toys and blankets and the hospital provided facilities for mothers to cook food, and wash clothes, as well as providing a nursery school and play rooms. Dr. Main said mental illness was often produced by effects in the whole family and to send only one person to hospital was to miss the subtleties of the situation. Dr. Main was one of the

innovators of “the concept of the therapeutic community,” which, he said, meant that not only doctors but other patients and the whole community must react to help the mentally sick. “We give our patients not only the opportunity to be sick, but the opportunity to be well,” said Dr. Main. “Patients and staff work together in running the hospital." There were also several patients who went out to work each day. “We once had a town clerk who went to the town hall each day and ran his town’s affairs while a patient in hospital,” said Dr. Main. Because of the saving on domestic and nursing staff—the patients did much for themselves —the hospital could afford expensive medical staff. All its staff were psychoanalysts.