Group Work in Mental Hospitals

¹ Physician Superintendent, Dingleton Hospital, Melrose, Roxburghshire, Scotland

The point of view expressed in this paper is that it is impossible to consider group treatment in psychiatric hospitals without referring to the social structure of the hospital as a whole. Treatment groups can be seen as somewhat artificial situations in which interaction between patients and staff is encouraged. It may be that through time more and more attention will come to be paid to the informal interaction which occurs between people; this may have more potentialities for treatment and training. Formal groups are less representative of the life that patients lead outside hospital. Moreover, the view is adopted that if staff do not spend a great deal of time examining their own inter-personal problems and how to deal with them it is doubtful if they are fully prepared to help patients in handling their problems of living.