Cultural aspects of the psychiatric hospital

Abstract

How a psychiatric hospital may be viewed will depend on how its professionals think about the origins and treatment of the mental disorders. If the illness is considered physical in origin, the hospital dealing with it will give medications and apply physical methods of therapy with the aim of discharging the patient rapidly. If one regards the mental disorder as having social origins the institution will deal with its social factors as important to the therapeutic process. It will design itself as a therapeutic community and consider itself primarily as such. The physical aspects of treatment will be thought of as secondary to the social ones.

One may think of a psychiatric hospital as a particular type of society or culture. In this culture the patient and staff are immersed and interact in the therapeutic process. It is to this culture that the patient must adapt. It is in this culture that physical treatments and social factors are brought to bear on the patient. This culture must in turn impact on the patient for better or worse.

This view requires a study of the elements which make the hospital's culture. It needs a knowledge of the larger culture and an awareness of its own impact on the institution. The value-system of the hospital also has a place of importance. This paper deals with the above and elements important to a psychiatric hospital which views itself as a culture.