Survey of a Psychogeriatric Ward

On entering psychiatry from general hospital posts, I found that part of my work lay in the wards for feeble, elderly patients. I felt it might be of interest to study these patients, and to see if they had all been admitted as young psychotics and grown old in hospital, or whether they had been admitted as elderly people. Also I wondered how many of them really needed mental hospital care, and what prevented the discharge of those who did not. Barrow is a modern hospital of some five hundred beds, and has an active policy of treatment and discharge. The 120 patients (50 males, 70 females) whom I studied occupied the "Sick Hospital", wards originally designed for the reception of those patients who became affected with some intercurrent physical illness during their stay. However, the beds had gradually become filled with elderly, feeble, but for the most part not frankly ill patients. For some time virtually all physical illness arising in younger patients had been dealt with in the other wards of the hospital, and the "Sick Hospital" had long since ceased to fulfil its original function. It had become in effect a psychogeriatric unit.