The value system of a milieu therapy unit.

Abstract

THIS paper reports the first part of a study of therapeutic values in a milieu therapy unit. We deal here with the exploration and measurement of those shared beliefs and values which make up the "hospital culture." Later reports will deal with value change during patients' hospitalizations, and the relations of value change to variables such as outcome of treatment. The patient-in-the-psychiatric-hospital has been the focus of increasingly intense interest during the past two decades. Clinicians and administrators have explored a variety of approaches to the hospitalized patient beginning with "total-push," and going on to include milieu therapy, therapeutic community, patient government, and a variety of unnamed enrichments and innovations in hospital treatment. In the past ten years there has been widespread acceptance and utilization of such approaches in psychiatric inpatient facilities, especially in general hospital wards, university-affiliated services,