The Story of Nursing in British Mental Hospitals

Niall McCrae is a lecturer in mental health nursing at Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing & Midwifery, King's College London. As well as the history of mental health care, his research interests include the therapeutic role of the nurse, and evaluation of training and treatment innovations in psychiatric services. His previous book, The Moon and Madness, examining the legendary notion of lunar influence on behaviour, featured on the BBC radio series, All in the Mind. Peter Nolan has worked for over fifty years in various capacities within mental health services, both in the UK and abroad. The focus of much of his research has been on how service users make sense of mental health services and the degree of understanding they bring to what is being provided. Though now retired, he continues to write about how and whether people with mental health problems benefit from interventions, how nurses interpret what they do and the likely changes that services will undergo in the future. He has a long-term interest in the evolution of psychiatric ideas and practices and the various factors that influence them. This book, he believes, is important in enabling the voices of the predecessors of mental health nurses to be heard, voices that for too long have been silent.