Asylum to Action: Paddington Day Hospital, Therapeutic Communities and Beyond

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Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Feb 17, 2006 - Social Science - 176 pages

Asylum to Action offers an alternative history of a libertarian therapeutic community at Paddington Day Hospital in West London in the 1970s. Helen Spandler recaptures the radical aspirations, as well as the conflicts, of the early therapeutic community movement, radical psychiatry and the patients' movement.

The author's account of the formation of the Mental Patients' Union, the first politicised psychiatric survivors group in the UK, raises questions about the connections between the service user movement, therapeutic communities, critiques of psychiatry and psychoanalytic models of intervention. In particular, Spandler challenges Claire Baron's dominant account of the subject in her influential book Asylum to Anarchy. She points out that some of the key difficulties that beset Paddington Day Hospital persist in modern therapeutic community practice and, indeed, in mental health services in general. Arguing that these dilemmas require sustained attention, Asylum to Action also informs a wider analysis of the significance of social movements, social action and critical social theory.

 

Contents

PREFACE
9
1 Introduction and Context
13
The Early Years
29
3 Protest and Social Action
39
4 The Mental Patients Union
52
5 Paddington Breakdown
68
6 Asylum to Anarchy?
87
7 A Consumable Pill of History
98
8 Anarchy to Asylum? Ongoing Conflicts in Practice
116
Beyond the Therapeutic Community
135
CHRONOLOGY OF KEY EVENTS
146
REFERENCES
149
SUBJECT INDEX
165
AUTHOR INDEX
169
Copyright

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About the author (2006)

Helen Spandler is a Research Fellow in the Department of Social Work at the University of Central Lancashire. She gained a PhD from Manchester Metropolitan University and has published in the area of mental health including young people and self harm and direct payments.

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