Did you know…..
that in 1953 an Expert Committee of the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the psychiatric hospital should be a therapeutic community?
According to said committee that therapeutic community should be governed by certain principles. Among such principles would be the conservation and safeguarding of the individuality of the patient, the conviction that the mentally ill are trustworthy and capable of taking their own initiatives and of assuming their responsibilities.
The previous was a step to end the classic psychiatric asylums in which there was a long history of oppression, abuse and violence, physical and mental. During those years a series of initiatives were taken in many Western countries to put an end to these practices, and to convert the old asylums into modern, short-stay hospital units and humane treatment. In addition, new and more effective treatments were instituted.
(Edited by Dr. María Moya Guirao, MD)