A mental health hospital's 200 years of care

A hospital which cares for people living with a mental illness is celebrating its 200th anniversary.

Oxford's Warneford Hospital is holding a year-long programme of events to mark the milestone, which it hopes will not only to inform people about the site but also get people talking about mental health.

Originally called the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum it opened in 1826 and is the longest serving psychiatric inpatient unit still in use in England.

Past patients and nurses have described what sets it apart and have looked at the archive imagery to get an insight into a history of mental illness in times gone past.

"Places themselves don't cure and treat people, that depends on compassionate and competent staff," says Dr John Hall, a former head psychologist at Warneford and historian in mental health.

He said in the 1700s privately owned "mad houses" were built to house people with mental ill health.

Warneford was built with just 40 beds, which was a far cry from the inner city asylums of the time, which would have up to 2,000.

Hall said: "They were very small, they were built to a much higher standard of accommodation, so many patients would have a single room, whereas in the larger asylums there would be dormitories or 30, 40, 50 patients."

The new hospital treated people who were "manic" and "often expressing delusions" and also those who at the time who were described as "melancholic," which would now be referred to as "depressed".

Dr Jane Freebody, is one of the historians behind a Warneford 200 exhibition arranged for the anniversary.

Reading one of the early patient records she describes how a woman named Mary Ball was admitted in 1827.

She said "purgatives", "mercury" and "bleeding" were used as methods to help her.

"Those were quite common treatments for all sorts of ailments, which people would have expected and they were trying to help, it just doesn't seem nice to us now," Freebody said.

Those practices are consigned to history but the sense of routine that began to be introduced back then, remains in place today.

"You get up every day at eight," said Sadie Reece who was treated at the Warneford when she was a teenager, for two years from 2016.

She added: "There was very much this rigid structure and then school, school was a very big part, which I think actually is one of the things why a lot of young people are able to manage it. I did my GCSE's there and the fact that I was able to do that was crazy and able to be supported in that."

The work by the "keepers" who were the nurses of the past, also remains similar to some of the practices employed by professionals today.

Samantha Robinson, worked in the Warneford for 35 years and reads how early training advice for those working at the hospital focused on how to speak to and interact with the clients, as well as looking for anything which may cause them harm. Messages which she believes are "still important" in the hospital.

"Trauma and distress over the years, is trauma and distress, the individual or the specific reasons may be different but that pain and suffering is the same," said Robinson.

"We're in a much better position now to understand that but the desire to want to support and to help people, I think that has remained."

A focus on at home and personal care alongside advancements in medication, has meant that support for people with mental health struggles has come a long way in 200 years.

The Warneford Hospital. was pioneering for its time and with a planned £750m development, by the Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust on the horizon, it could continue to lead the way in the future.

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