Outpatients clinics and the 1930 Mental Treatment Act: Patients and practitioners, c.1888–c.1940

Abstract

This article explores the introduction of the 1930 Mental Treatment Act (MTA) and places it within a longer-term trajectory of the development of acute services. While many historians have considered the apparent novelty of the MTA, they have tended to see the development of outpatients clinics as separate from the ongoing demand on in-patient services. Using patient case files from the West Riding Mental Hospital, in the northern English county of Yorkshire, consideration is given to the links and overlaps between the creation of the new legalistic categories of temporary and voluntary inpatients and the development of outpatients clinics over the longer-term. Using quantitative and qualitative evidence it demonstrates the continuities in terms of the provision of services and the financial limitations that impacted on their delivery. While attention is paid to the medical story, including the place of female psychiatrists and social workers in the delivery of services, this article emphasises the role of patients, families and non-specialist practitioners in their successes and failures.