Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
History
Conference of Officers in Charge of Government Hospitals Serving Veterans of the World War
Medicine, Military; Military hospitals; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Medical care -- United States
The _third_ agency, which has been very much broadened in its activities
in recent years, I may designate as the social agency. It recognizes
implicitly at least, if not consciously, that mental disease at any rate
the kind of mental disease included in the second group, the so-called
“insane” is a disorder of the individual as a member of the social group
and that it manifests itself largely by disturbances of his relation to
his fellows, and therefore it becomes a legitimate therapeutic endeavor
to attempt a readjustment of these relationships. To this end the social
agency has been developed in many directions. In the first place, we
have amusements. The simpler amusements may be called, speaking from the
point of view of the patient, the passive variety,—the type of amusement
that is brought to the patient, such as theatrical performances, moving
pictures, and the like, whereas the second type of amusement, which is
more advanced and more valuable, is the type in which the patient
himself takes part, such for example as theatrical performances in which
he is a performer, musical programs, in which he plays or sings. Then
there is the group which is not after all very widely separated from the
amusement group and yet is somewhat different, and that is the group
which we might term athletic activities and which demand upon the part
of the patient some initiative. These range all the way from the
simplest activities, which are imitative in nature, such as calisthenics
under the instruction of the athletic director, to mass games, where a
large group of patients are all engaged together in a common purpose,
such as push ball, to games of contest requiring not only initiative but
a relatively high degree of efficiency, such as the tug-of-war and the
various types of races and stunts, boxing and wrestling, and which are
from time to time advantageously staged on a field day and receive the
added stimulus of an audience. In addition to such activities as the
above there are also many minor ones of a similar nature, the principle
of which, however, is the same,—the social give-and-take of patient
between ward and ward, the instruction in such things as folk-dances,
and the like.
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