Community mental health nursing: an interpretation of history as a context for contemporary research

Abstract

The first community psychiatric nursing service in the UK is reputed to have been initiated at Warlingham Park Hospital, Surrey in 1954, when the Physician Superintendent recognised that pressure on beds had followed an increase in the number of hospital admissions that arose from the traumas of World War II (Nolan, 1993). He used the opportunities provided by the Mental Treatment Act of 1930 to implement a scheme that was essentially a pragmatic method of relieving pressure on hospital beds ‘with a consequent better service to patients within the hospital’ (May and Moore, 1963). At first, two nurses were assigned to the social work department of the hospital and functioned as ‘social work aides’ (Greene, 1990); only later did a ‘distinct nursing function become obvious’. At a later stage, two more nursing staff were seconded to ‘the project’.