The British Journal of Psychiatry (2003) 183: A22
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatry in pictures
CHOSEN BY ROBERT HOWARD
Do you have an image, preferably accompanied by 100 to 200 words of
explanatory text, that you think would be suitable for Psychiatry in Pictures?
Submissions are very welcome and should be sent direct to Professor Robert
Howard, Box 070, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF, UK.
| |
Annie Altschul teaching psychiatric nurses, 1950s, Bethlem Hospital
|
|
There was no more important figure in the development of psychiatric
nursing in postwar Britain than Annie Altschul (1919–2001). Having fled
her native Austria under threat of Nazi occupation, she spent the war in
London, training in general nursing and midwifery, then gained psychiatric
nursing qualifications at Mill Hill Emergency Hospital, to where Maudsley
Hospital staff had been evacuated. Of Mill Hill she later wrote: ‘I
found an excitement about the work that I had not encountered before.
Everybody was expected to make a contribution. The staff, both doctors and
nurses, were very keen to learn and every patient was regarded as interesting
and someone from whom we could learn a lot. I worked with people I had only
read about until then, Dr Maxwell Jones, Dr William Sargant and Dr Emanuel
Miller and each of them made a considerable impression on me’ (quoted by
Peter Nolan (1993) in A History of Mental Health Nursing. London:
Chapman & Hall). Returning to the Maudsley after the war, and while still
in her twenties, she became involved in nursing education, progressing in due
course to the rank of Principal Tutor at the then-merged Bethlem and Maudsley
Hospitals. She relinquished this post to join Edinburgh University's
Department of Nursing Studies in 1964, and chaired that department from 1976
until her retirement in 1983. Annie Altschul was a Socratic teacher of the old
school, an active researcher, and a pioneer writer on – and robust
advocate for – the role of the psychiatric nurse. She inspired and
challenged a generation of students. In retirement, she courageously
documented her own struggle with and treatment for clinical depression,
maintaining that ‘I was lucky in my encounter with the psychiatric
services and in my choice of colleagues and friends’, while admitting
that ‘I must have been a difficult patient to care for’ (Vicky
Rippiere & Ruth Williams (1985) Wounded Healers: Mental Health
Workers' Experiences of Depression. Chichester: Wiley). She died, aged
82, on Christmas Eve 2001. Photograph reproduced by permission of Bethlem
Royal Hospital Archives & Museum. With thanks to Colin Gale (Archivist,
Archives & Museum, Bethlem Royal Hospital, Monks Orchard Road, Beckenham,
Kent BR3 3BX, UK; tel: 020 8776 4053) for supplying the image and text.
