Collective biography and the legacy of Hildegard Peplau, Annie Altschul and Eileen Skellern; the origins of mental health nursing and its relevance to the current crisis in psychiatry‡

Abstract

Oral history and biographical research gathering previously unpublished material directly from Altschul and Peplau, and new commentaries on Eileen Skellern from colleagues, are triangulated to form a collective biography that accesses historical consciousness of times of great change in psychiatry. We can see core ideas about psychiatric nursing aggregated around the idea active therapeutic engagement. Peplau and Altschul were simultaneously working with innovative methods of community-based therapy during the Second World War in England with shell-shocked soldiers. Both developed founding ideologies in psychoanalysis and therapeutic community practice. A similar trajectory is apparent in the work of Eileen Skellern. User involvement and social inclusion, the corner stones of therapeutic community practice, remain intrinsic to the aspirations of psychiatry today.