| AdminHistory | The Mental Health Act 1959 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom concerning England and Wales which had, as its main objectives, to abolish the distinction between psychiatric hospitals and other types of hospitals and to de-institutionalise mental health patients and see them treated more by community care.
It also defined the term mental disorder for the first time: "mental illness as distinct from learning disability. The definition was “mental illness; arrest or incomplete development of mind; psychopathic disorder; and any other disorder or disability of mind”.
In 1962 The English Division of the Professional Psychologists of the British Psychological Society set up a working party to consider certain aspects of the Mental Health Act in relation to 'mental subnormality'. The working party conducted a survey of adults admitted to mental hospitals in 1961, considered plans for hospital and community care and examined facilities for children collecting data on those admitted during 1962, together with attitudes and commitments of educational psychologists.
|
| Copyright | Subject to the condition of the original, copies may be supplied for private research use only on receipt of a signed undertaking to comply with current copyright legislation. Permission to make any published use of material from the collection must be sought in advance from the Head of the History of Psychology Centre and Archives and, where appropriate, from the copyright owner. Where possible, assistance will be given in identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material |