From their beginnings as the asylum attendants of the 19th century, mental health nurses have come a long way. This comprehensive volume is the first book in over twenty years to explore the history of mental health nursing, and during this period the landscape has transformed as the large institutions have been replaced by services in the community. McCrae and Nolan examine how the role of mental health nursing has evolved in a social and professional context, brought to life by an abundance of anecdotal accounts. Moving from the early nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, the book’s nine chronologically-ordered chapters follow the development from untrained attendants in the pauper lunatic asylums to the professionally-qualified nurses of the twentieth century, and, finally, consider the rundown and closure of the mental hospitals from nurses’ perspectives. Throughout, the argument is made that whilst the training, organisation and environment of mental health nursing has changed, the aim has remained essentially the same: to develop a therapeutic relationship with people in distress. McCrae and Nolan look forward as well as back, and highlight significant messages for the future of mental health care. For mental health nursing to be meaningfully directed, we must first understand the place from which this field has developed. This scholarly but accessible book is aimed at anyone with an interest in mental health or social history, and will also act as a useful resource for policy-makers, managers and mental health workers.

Peter Nolan presents a history of psychiatric nursing which contrasts the distress of those who have experienced mental illness with the pioneering efforts of psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses.

This book seeks to integrate the history of mental health nursing with the wider history of institutional and community care. It develops new research questions by drawing together a concern with exploring the class, gender, skills and working conditions of practitioners with an assessment of the care regimes staff helped create and patients’ experiences of them. Contributors from a range of disciplines use a variety of source material to examine both continuity and change in the history of care over two centuries. The book benefits from a foreword by Mick Carpenter and will appeal to researchers and students interested in all aspects of the history of nursing and the history of care. The book is also designed to be accessible to practitioners and the general reader.

Drawing on a rich array of source materials including previously unseen, fascinating (and often quite moving) oral histories, archival and news media sources, 'Curing queers' examines the plight of men who were institutionalised in British mental hospitals to receive ‘treatment’ for homosexuality and transvestism, and the perceptions and actions of the men and women who nursed them. It examines why the majority of the nurses followed orders in administering the treatment – in spite of the zero success-rate in ‘straightening out’ queer men – but also why a small number surreptitiously defied their superiors by engaging in fascinating subversive behaviours. 'Curing queers' makes a significant and substantial contribution to the history of nursing and the history of sexuality, bringing together two sub-disciplines that combine only infrequently. It will be of interest to general readers as well as scholars and students in nursing, history, gender studies, and health care ethics and law.

As to the staff, both nurses and doctors were treating patients with a mixture of prejudice, ill-understood physical interventions such as shock therapy (in all its forms), and sedation. We all conducted our care within the provisions of the Mental Health Acts of 1959 and 1983, but the older nurses and doctors had been trained postwar. Doctors generally expected, and got, deference from patients. They got it from nurses too, though nurses could be a two-faced lot. Maybe it was the older nurses enduring influence that made psychiatric nurses enforce compliance from their patients. But from the 1960s, protest against the big forbidding madhouses became more frequent and vociferous. By the 1980s, there was a storm of coruscating reports and bitterly convincing accounts of mistreatment. So a new NHS mental health care policy was developed: Care in the Community. The old institutions would close down, and their inhabitants would be parented, so to speak, by the social security system and visits from community-based psychiatric nurses. This was not only cheaper (it got rid of those old asylums), but it also reflected liberal views of mental disorder as something that, with love and responsibility, could be lessened, while the mentally disadvantaged would have a better quality of life. Care in the Community got rid of some of the staff too, but many carried their old behavior into new jobs. This book relates my experiences between 1969 and 1989. I would like to think that psychiatric care is better now, but I dont. I think its just different.

*Interested in purchasing The Art and Science of Mental Health Nursing as a SmartBook? Visit https://connect2.mheducation.com/join/?c=normanryrie4e to register for access today* This well-established textbook is a must-buy for all mental health nursing students and nurses in registered practice. Comprehensive and broad, it explores how mental health nursing has a positive impact on the lives of people with mental health difficulties. Several features help you get the most out of each chapter and apply theory to practice, including: • Personal Stories: Provide insight into the experience of mental health difficulties from the perspective of service users and their carers • Thinking Spaces: Help you reflect on your practice and assess your learning individually and in groups, with further guidance available online • Recommended Resources: Provide additional materials and support to help extend your learning New to this edition: With four brand new chapters plus nine chapters re-written by original authors, key developments in this edition include: • Physical health care of people with mental health problems • Care of people who experience trauma • Promoting mental health and well-being • Support needed by nurses to provide therapeutic care and to derive satisfaction from their work • Innovations in mental health practice ‘The newly revised and updated edition has continued to offer an intelligent and readable text that offers a great deal to both students and those undertaking continuous professional development … This edition continues to offer “thinking spaces” that encourage the reader to reflect upon and consider what they have learned in a most practical way. I wholeheartedly recommend this book and continue to be impressed with its high standards of presentation and scholarship’. Emeritus Professor Tony Butterworth CBE, Chair, Foundation of Nursing Studies, Vice Chair RCN Foundation, UK ‘It is a pleasure to open this book and to see the comprehensive range of information and evidence based guidance in relation to effective practice in nursing. Even If you only buy one professional book this year make it this one!’ Baroness Watkins of Tavistock; Crossbench Peer, PhD and RN (Adult and Mental Health), UK ‘The importance of the teaching within this book cannot be underestimated … The book is written by credible and respected practitioners and will support mental health nurses to practice from the best evidence available today working from and with the human condition’. Beverley Murphy, Director of Nursing, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

Nursing History Review, an annual peer-reviewed publication of the American Association for the History of Nursing, is a showcase for the most significant current research on nursing history. Regular sections include scholarly articles, over a dozen book reviews of the best publications on nursing and health care history that have appeared in the past year, and a section abstracting new doctoral dissertations on nursing history. Historians, researchers, and individuals fascinated with the rich field of nursing will find this an important resource. Included in Volume 27... Hidden and Forgotten: Being Black in the American Red Cross Town and Country Nursing Service, 1912–1948 “Not only with Thy Hands, But Also with Thy minds”: Salvaging Psychologically Damaged Soldiers in the Second World War Cold Interests, Hot Conflicts: How a Professional Association Responded to a Change in Political Regimes The Historian and the Activist: How to Tell Stories that Matter Louise Fitzpatrick, EdD, RN, FAAN: March 24, 1942-September 1, 2017