'With care in the community, everything goes': coproducing oral histories to re-examine the provision of care in the mental hospitals

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Calabria, V. ORCID: 0000-0001-8823-8192, 2022. 'With care in the community, everything goes': coproducing oral histories to re-examine the provision of care in the mental hospitals. Oral History, 50 (1), pp. 93-103. ISSN 0143-0955

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Abstract

This article draws on oral histories coproduced with former patients of two state mental hospitals in Nottinghamshire, collected thirty years after their closure. The oral histories reveal the mental hospitals to be more welcoming and relaxing environments when compared to the current system of acute inpatient services, which is oriented towards crisis management. Former patients found accessing meaningful occupation as well the ability to move within internal and external institutional spaces to be central to recovery. They expressed a sense of loss of inpatient therapeutic environments when undergoing crisis following deinstitutionalisation and the advent of community care. The findings have important implications for the historiography of psychiatry and bear on current mental health policy.

Item Type:

Journal article

Publication Title:

Oral History

Creators:

Calabria, V.

Publisher:

Oral History Society

Date:

31 January 2022

Volume:

Number: