M.A. (Psychology) / The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the services and methods provided by the various medical and psychological professions within an inpatient psychiatric hospital setting. While working at a psychiatric hospital, the researcher was struck by the high readmittance rate of patients. This tended to create a general feeling of disappointment, frustration and impotence amongst the professions. The importance of such an investigation was therefore required, in order to help facilitate and improve current methods. A thorough investigation of the literature with regard to the current treatment methods at psychiatric hospitals, both on an international and national level, were undertaken. An in-depth case study was described and analysed to indicate the recurrent procedures, methods and treatment modalities that were being instituted within the hospital setting. The aim of this thesis was also to propose an alternative method to the current procedures, using an in-depth case study to indicate the use thereof.

Utilizing clients in decision-making, advocacy, and service delivery roles within the treatment environment is one means of providing the chronic mentally disabled with opportunities for participatory social roles, choice and control. However, client deficiencies of skill, experience, and motivation are suggested to be barriers to the successful accomplishment .of this purpose. Strategies are needed to overcome these barriers. Feedback has been shown to be an effective, low-cost tool for increasing accomplishment in work settings. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of feedback in increasing the independent participation of a mental health consumer advisory group. This was investigated utilizing a multiple baseline design across the three behaviors required to fulfill the group's functions. A structured agenda, including all necessary tasks was also introduced for each of the three behaviors. While inclusion of a task as an agenda item was found to be sufficient to assure a high level of participation, consistency of this high level was increased with feedback. As the study progressed, the percentage of consumer generated tasks on the agenda increased. Results suggest that while this mental health consumer group initially lacked the skills and knowledge to specify the tasks required to fulfill its functions when the tasks were specified, the group generally performed them with a high level of independent participation. This study also suggests that, with experience, skills and knowledge increased resulting in increased consumer group independence in specifying the tasks required to structure the agenda and fulfill its roles.

No description available.

I examined the factors that led to the rise and fall of psychiatric hospitals and its impact on two select groups of individuals: adults and older adults with severe mental illness. To explore the reasons behind these fluctuations, the State of Texas was used as a case study. Additionally, the fluctuations occurred for different reasons in public vs. for-profit investor-owned psychiatric hospitals. Using an investor-owned psychiatric hospital organization as a case study, I investigated the differences in factors that influenced the growth and/or demise in public vs. investor-owned psychiatric hospitals. Evolution and devolution of psychiatric hospitals was assessed during select time periods: 1700 to1930, 1940 to1970, 1980 to 2000, and 2000 to present. Time period selections were relevant to the important drivers of the span of time that influenced the psychiatric hospitals. Historical review and trend analysis was used to identify the total number of psychiatric hospitals and/or total number of psychiatric hospital beds and psychiatric hospitals by type. Analysis showed there was a cyclical pattern of evolution and devolution of psychiatric hospitals and each cycle altered the form, function, and role of the psychiatric hospital along with altering the location of care for adults and older adults with severe mental illness. The research results suggest a long-stay residential facility, specializing in evidence-based treatment for adults and older adults with severe mental illness, to counter the dire shortage of psychiatric hospital beds.

Thesis (M.A. (English))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2016. / This dissertation examines how particular combinations of image and text in sequential art reflect specific social, historical and political contexts. The analysis of how meaning is constructed is done through consideration of three iterations of the Batman superhero character, and argues for an eventual postmodernisation of the character. The first case study presented is the original version of Batman as it debuted in 1939, which naturally established much of the substance from which later depictions would take their cues. The second case study used is the “camp” 1960s TV series starring Adam West, which was influenced by the highly restricted Batman comics under the Comics Code Authority established in 1954. The main case study, and the central focus of this dissertation, is Batman – Arkham Asylum (1989), a graphic novel by Grant Morrison and Dave McKean, the latest of the three iterations, which represents the eventual disruption of the enforced or constructed harmony evident in the earlier versions of the character into a fracturing and fragmentation both of the world and the self. It is a version of Batman that privileges the interiority and psychological complexity of the character, representing a culmination of the 1980s shift toward a more mature audience with its incorporation of horror, violence and mental turmoil. These three examples are compared and contrasted, showing how each constructs a particular meaning using its own unique combination of image and text. Having established a historicity for the character and having constructed an argument for how Batman as a cultural icon echoes shifts in society, the focus of the dissertation is transferred to a deeper analysis of Arkham and attempts to trace more explicitly its status as a postmodern text by examining its fragmentary nature, its use of intertextuality and how meaning in Arkham is constructed in the mind. Following this, an exploration of the central theme of madness in the graphic novel is provided in order to show how the work both critiques the representation of madness in fiction as well as how the liminal setting of the asylum functions as part of the postmodernisation of Batman by creating a “landscape of madness” where irrationality and the uncanny dominate reality, in contrast to the logical, “left-brain” treatment of Batman which had become common prior to Arkham Asylum. The analysis of the three iterations is shaped by WTJ Mitchell’s theories on imagetext relationships and additionally by the principles of sequential art outlined by Scott McCloud. The postmodern theoretical framework is informed by John Docker’s explorations of fragmentation, intertextuality, inversion and the Carnivalesque. Additionally, the writings of Lillian Feder and Michel Foucault will inform the discussion of madness in Arkham. / GR2017

The thesis is in three major sections, plus a brief conclusion. The first section provides essentail background by describing the care of the mentally ill in England and New South Wales (including the Port Phillip district) in the period prior to the establishment of Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum in 1848. The second section is a chronological history of Yarra Bend, particularly focusing on the period from its inception in 1848 until the Royal Commission of 1884; with some extension to describe the other psychiatric services within Victoria during the same period.The third section discusses at length a number of key issues identified within the chronological history.

No description available.

Bipolar disorder is the sixth leading cause of disability in the world among people aged 15-44. Bipolar disorder is a chronic psychiatric disorder with a significant impact on patients’ social, occupational, and general functioning well-being. Patients who are diagnosed with bipolar type 1 disorder are usually admitted to a psychiatric hospital as an involuntary patient which means that they will be cared for in a closed unit. In a critical analysis of the literature it was noted that not much is known of the experiences of patients in psychiatric wards. The researcher used a qualitative approach, with a phenomenological research strategy. An explorative, descriptive and contextual design was utilized to gain more insight into female patients’ lived experiences during their admission and stay in a tertiary level psychiatric institution. The research population was female patients who were diagnosed with bipolar disorder and who had recently experienced being admitted to and treated at a tertiary level psychiatric facility where they were treated for this condition. Purposive sampling was utilised to obtain the sample for the study. A pilot study was conducted before the study commenced to ensure the trustworthiness of the findings. The researcher obtained the data via semi-structured interviews as well as field notes and reflective journals. Data was analysed by using Tesch’s method as adopted by Creswell. Once the data had been analysed, a literature control was done in accordance with the findings. Guba’s model of trustworthiness was utilized to ensure that this study was trustworthy and credible. The researcher implemented ethical principles to ensure that no harm was done to the participants during the research study. Finally, guidelines were developed to assist professional nurses to manage patients optimally during their admission and stay in a closed unit of a tertiary psychiatric facility.

This project charts two tandem phenomena in late modern Britain: the emergence of a new mode of political theatre that I term “claustrophobic dramaturgy” and the growth of the carceral state. Through close textual analysis, performance reconstruction, and archival research, I demonstrate how two generations of feminist playwrights have honed and exchanged a complement of narrative and/or theatrical strategies which stage their dramatic protagonists as entrapped. These literal representations of confinement work to suggest more abstract, structural modes of confinement, including criminalized social identities, punitive public policies, and new carceral technologies. I draw together a surprising constellation of plays, produced since 1979, and united by a common investigation of the impacts of privatization and austerity on British state institutions. Chapter 1 identifies social housing plays as a distinct sub-genre of British social realism. This sub-genre reveals how, as social housing became increasingly residualized, social renters were subjected to increasing state surveillance. Chapter 2 extends overdue critical attention to Clean Break Theatre Company, which has, since 1979, dedicated its entire oeuvre to the topic of women’s incarceration. Chapter 3 investigates theatre’s surprising preoccupation with psychiatric hospitals in the midst of broadscale deinstitutionalization and funding cuts to the mental health sector. Finally, Chapter 4 examines the conjunction of Shakespeare adaptation and claustrophobic dramaturgy, both to reveal how carceral logics are embedded in the Shakespeare texts themselves and to demonstrate the new political dramaturgy’s saturation of British theatre culture. To the field of theatre studies, this project advances a critical reevaluation of late modern and contemporary British theatre history. While Socialist theatre often has been characterized as the province of a white boys’ club of the 1970s, I demonstrate how women playwrights take up this Socialist mantle to decry the carceral consequences of dismantling the welfare state. Case studies of plays by Black British playwrights are central to each chapter, weaving the history of Afrodiasporic theatre in the UK into the heart of my account of dramaturgical innovation. This project also offers one of the earliest examinations of professional theatre guided by questions and insights from the growing, multi-disciplinary field of carceral studies. If, as carceral studies scholars assert, the carceral is an ever moving and expanding target, we, as audiences and scholars, can look to claustrophobic dramaturgy to illuminate new carceral incursions on civic life and institutions.

MCur / Department of Advanced Nursing Science