Getting Under Way

Abstract

Traditionally the social worker helps the psychiatrist by interviewing families, and contacting agencies or individuals for social history information. This helps in establishing the facts about the patient’s social and economic condition and in determining the diagnosis. However, in the 24-bed psychiatric ward of this general hospital, we have found that by integrating casework skills with the program of the total hospital team, psychiatric social workers can offer additional essential service. The hospital is a public one, and our service is geared to emergency and acute illness. Our patients are often transients rather than residents. The maximum stay is three months, the average 25 days. The psychiatric social work staff consists of three trained psychiatric social workers who give part time to the ward and part time to two psychiatric out-patient clinics; they work under a qualified psychiatric casework supervisor. In addition they have a regular program of consultation with staff and resident psychiatrists. They attend ward rounds and staff meetings. On admission each patient is assigned to a social worker as well as to a resident psychiatrist. The social worker, in his routine work of establishing contacts with families, friends, ministers, employers, landlords and social agencies, is also establishing relationships which can be of real value. The patient’s family are helped with their feelings of guilt or anxiety about his illness. They are more ready to accept the need to sign legal papers for treatment or for commitment to the State hospital if this is necessary. When a patient is transferred to the State hospital, we urge families and friends to keep in touch with him through mail and visits, and to be ready to help him when he returns to the community. Families are encouraged to keep in touch with our Social Service workers following the patient’s discharge, so that we may help them with any probWith the arrival of our architect, Mr. Alston G. Guttersen, and the first meeting of a consultant committee of psychiatrists and architects, the Hospital Architectural Study Project is now under way. First steps involve the collection of plans and specifications on recent and proposed mental hospital construction, and the accumulation of bibliographic material. Enlargement of the consulting group to the study is awaiting acceptances from the psychiatrists and architects approached. The architects are being appointed by the President of the American Institute of Architects, which is cooperating with us in this project. Plans for dissemination of the material to be developed include the use of several pages of MENTAL HOSPITALS each month for descriptive matter, cuts and plates. The circulation of this magazine, therefore, is to be extended to interested architects in addition to the present distribution to mental hospital personnel and mental health authorities. The preparation of loose-leaf bulletins to form a constantly up-to-date manual on mental hospital design, construction and equipment is also contemplated. Architectural journals have expressed an interest in running progress reports on the proj-