This article is only available in the PDF format. Download the PDF to view the article, as well as its associated figures and tables.
Experiencing the Patient's Day: A Manual for Psychiatric Hospital Personnel. By Robert W. Hyde, in Collaboration with the Attendants of Boston Psychopathic Hospital. Price, $2.20. Pp. 214. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 210 Madison Ave., New York 16, 1955.
Newer knowledge of group dynamics and of interpersonal relations has had a profound effect on psychiatric theory and practice. The recent interest in the population of mental hospitals by social psychologists and anthropologists has brought new life into the so-called milieu therapy for psychiatric patients in state institutions, psychiatric units in general hospitals, and sanitoria.
These two books are concerned with the practical problems involved in understanding and treating mental patients by the nurse (Schwartz and Shockley) and by the psychiatric aide or attendant (Hyde). Both authors use the same method—a frank and open discussion of the day-by-day situations that the nurse or aide encounters on the psychiatric ward. From these, certain