Abstract
At the end of Stengel’s 1952 paper, ‘Enquiries into attempted suicide’, he speculates about the potential scale of this behaviour:
[I]f the appeal character is such an important feature of the suicidal attempt as we have made it out to be, is there not a likelihood that this powerful and dangerous appeal will be used more and more, especially in a society which has made every individual’s welfare its collective responsibility? I think that this danger can easily be overestimated. ‘Attempted suicide’ is a behaviour pattern which is at the disposal of only a limited group of personalities.1
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Notes
E. Stengel, ‘Enquiries into Attempted Suicide (Abridged)’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 45 (1952): 620
R. Jack, Women and Attempted Suicide London, Lawrence Erlbaum (1992): xii
H. Matthew, ‘Poisoning in the Home by Medicaments’ British Medical Journal 2, 5517 (1966): 788
C. Millard and S. Wessely, ‘Parity of Esteem Between Physical and Mental Health’ British Medical Journal 349, 7894 (2014): 6821;
P. Border and Chris Millard, Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology ‘Parity of Esteem in Mental Health’ (2015) online at: http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-papers/POST-PN-485/parity-of-esteem-for-mental-health accessed 30 January 2015
K. Robinson, ‘The Public and Mental Health’ in Trends in the Mental Health Services H.L. Freeman and W.A.J. Farndale (eds) Oxford, Pergamon (1963): 16
A.T. Scull, Decarceration: Community Treatment and the Deviant: A Radical View London, Prentice-Hall (1977)
H. Lester and J. Glasby, Mental Health Policy and Practice Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan (2006): 27
This starts early: R.M. Titmuss, ‘Community Care: Fact or Fiction?’ in Commitment to Welfare R.M. Titmuss (ed.) London: George Allen & Unwin, ([1961] 1968): 221–5; see also
H.R. Rollin, ‘Social and Legal Repercussions of the Mental Health Act, 1959’ British Medical Journal 1, 5333 (1963): 788.
A. Rogers and D. Pilgrim, Mental Health Policy in Britain 2nd ed. London, Macmillan (2001): 55, 65. Recent examples of ‘institution-community’ binaries include
M. Gorsky, ‘The British National Health Service 1948–2008: A Review of the Historiography’ Social History of Medicine 21(3) (2008): 449; Lester and Glasby, Mental Health Policy and Practice: 27
G. Eghigian, ‘Deinstitutionalizing the History of Contemporary Psychiatry’ History of Psychiatry 22(2) (2011): 203, emphasis in the original.
For an apt historiographical summary, see J. Welshman, ‘Rhetoric and Reality: Community Care in England and Wales, 1948–74’ in Outside the Walls of the Asylum: The History of Care in the Community 1750–2000 P. Bartlett and D. Wright (eds) London: Athlone Press (1999): 205. This covers the contributions of Kathleen Jones, Andrew Scull, Peter Sedgwick and Joan Busfield.
C. Webster, ‘Psychiatry and the Early National Health Service: The Role of the Mental Health Standing Advisory Committee’ in 150 Years of British Psychiatry, 1841–1991 H. Freeman and G. E. Berrios (eds) London, Gaskell (1991): 104
B. Wootton, Social Science and Social Pathology London, George Allen & Unwin (1959): 208–9
D. Stafford-Clark, ‘Attempted Suicide’ Lancet 281, 7278 (1963): 448–9. Two of the other participants in this correspondence argument are Neil Kessel and Richard Asher, and the correspondence was initially sparked by an Erwin Stengel article.
N. Kessel, ‘Self-Poisoning — Part II’ British Medical Journal 2, 5474 (1965): 1340
G.D. Middleton, D.W. Ashby and F. Clark, ‘An Analysis of Attempted Suicide in an Urban Industrial District’ Practitioner 187 (1961): 776–82;
M. Woodside, ‘Attempted Suicides Arriving at a General Hospital’ British Medical Journal 2, 5093 (1958): 411–4;
J.J. Fleminger and B.L. Mallett, ‘Psychiatric Referrals from Medical and Surgical Wards’ British Journal of Psychiatry 108 (1962): 183–90
J.E. Lennard-Jones and R.A.J. Asher, ‘Why Do They Do It? A Study of Pseudocide’ Lancet 1, 7083 (1959): 1138
M. Jarvis, Conservative Governments, Morality and Social Change in Affluent Britain, 1957–64 Manchester, Manchester University Press (2005): 6
Baron Wolfenden of Westcott, Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution London, HMSO (1957)
P. Hennessy, Having It So Good: Britain in the Fifties London, Allen Lane (2006): 505–6
British Medical Association Committee on Psychiatry and the Law, ‘The Law Relating to Attempted Suicide’ British Medical Journal Supplement 2210, 5406 (1947): S.103. One of the arguments advanced by a Church of England booklet (see below) is similar: ‘The punishment of the offender is not likely to deter others from attempting to commit suicide, if only because they will be confident of success.’
Church Information Office, Ought Suicide to Be a Crime? A Discussion on Suicide, Attempted Suicide and the Law Westminster, Church Information Office (1959): 10. Note the use of ‘would-be suicide’ in a context that implies earnest, uncomplicated intent.
G.L. Williams, The Sanctity of Life and the Criminal Law: On Contraception, Sterilization, Artificial Insemination, Abortion, Suicide and Euthanasia London, Faber & Faber (1958): 250, 253; quoting
W.L. Neustatter, Psychological Disorder and Crime London, Christopher Johnson (1953): 68
J. Fry, Casualty Services and Their Setting: A Study in Medical Care Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust (1960);
Ministry of Health, ‘Accident and Emergency Services: Report of a Sub-Committee (Platt Report)’ London, HMSO (1962)
E. Stengel, ‘Attempted Suicide: Its Management in the General Hospital’ Lancet 1, 7275 (1963): 233
E. Stengel ‘The National Health Service and the Suicide Problem’ in Sociological Review Monograph No. 5: Sociology and Medicine: Studies within the Framework of the British National Health Service P. Halmos (ed.) Keele: University of Keele (1962): 205
W.M. Millar, G. Innes and G.A. Sharp, ‘Hospital and Outpatient Clinics: The Design of a Reporting System and the Difficulties to Be Expected in the Execution’ in The Burden on the Community: The Epidemiology of Mental Illness A Symposium (1962): 2
P. Sainsbury and J. Grad, ‘Evaluation of Treatment and Services’ in The Burden on the Community: The Epidemiology of Mental Illness: A Symposium (1962) appendix I, unnumbered page
I. Hacking, Rewriting the Soul Princeton, Princeton University Press (1995): 236
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Millard, C. (2015). Self-Harm Becomes Epidemic: Mental Health (1959) and Suicide (1961) Acts. In: A History of Self-Harm in Britain. Mental Health in Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-52962-6_4
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