A Psychiatric Out-Patient Nursing Service

The Mental Treatment Act of 1930, in addition to creating voluntary status for patients entering a psychiatric hospital for treatment and care, provided for the setting up of out-patient clinics at which such cases could be seen and properly assessed by a Pyschiatrist before hospitalisation was decided upon. The Act, as a whole, was an enlightened and forward looking piece of legislation and in providing a psychiatric service within the community had taken a tremendous step to encourage the use ?f specialist help at an early stage in the illness, with the consequent availability of care, treatment either in or out of hospital as the case merited, and the increased possibility of more rapid improvement or abatement of symptoms. The service, however, whilst providing a specialist psychiatric service within the community, still meant that in many cases where psychiatric nursing supervision was needed, the patient had to be hospitalised. While there was a slowly increasing awareness for the necessity of seeking early advice where psychiatric illness was suspected, the acceptance of admission into a psychiatric hospital still presented a formidable obstacle in many instances. Regardless of this, however, the numbers of admission to hospital increased, Particularly after the war, and pressure on accommodation soon led to an alarming degree of overcrowding. In July 1954 at Warlingham Park Hospital (which serves the Croydon area with a population of upwards of 260,000) constantly recurring problems of accommodation, as a direct result