How to Care for the Insane: A Manual for NursesGranger, William D.
Science
How to Care for the Insane: A Manual for Nurses
Granger, William D.
Psychiatric nursing
The first impressions a new patient receives may be the lasting ones, and
influence their whole conduct in the asylum. If they resist what is
necessary to do for them, do not struggle and contend with them, and force
them to bed, or to the bath, but first seek advice from the supervisor, or
the physician.
Always search new patients, unless otherwise ordered, for money, jewelry,
weapons, medicine, and other like articles, or if in doubt what to do ask
for directions. The head, body, and clothing should be examined for
vermin, and the body for injuries and bruises. If what is wished to be
done in this particular is explained, patients will generally quietly
allow it.
_Work, Employment, and Occupation._--By this is meant whatever occupies
the patient's time and mind, in useful and pleasant ways.
Of all things idleness and loafing are the worst; even games, such as
billiards and cards, if indulged in to the exclusion of useful employment,
will degenerate a patient.
Some willing patients are kept in a tread-mill of daily work, their
monotonous life never broken by a diversion, an enjoyment, or a hope. It
is very questionable if it is beneficial to make a patient drudge through
such a daily routine.
Asylum life should be made as home-like, pleasant, and natural as
possible; as a rule every patient who is able should do some useful work
every day, and to this should be added the diversion, that comes from
amusements and the enjoyment of innocent pleasures.
Occupation then means a great deal more than work; it is the way a patient
spends his time. Unless encouraged and directed, patients may occupy
themselves in thinking of their delusions, in noise, violence, or
destructiveness, in idly walking up and down the wards, in the indulgence
of secret vices, in gossip, in spreading discontent, in prayer, or in
constant Bible reading. Some patients really work hard trying to do
nothing, and have no more ambition than to sit around on the ward, and
chew tobacco, and indulge in idleness.
Patients should be encouraged to do something for themselves, the women to
make and mend their own clothes, to keep their rooms in good order, and
assist about the ward. They should be made to feel that they can add to
their own comfortable surroundings by their own efforts.
For the men, ward work is not so natural or tasteful, but they will do
with interest much of this kind of work; to this may be added employment
in decorating their own rooms or the ward, and in caring for plants and
flowers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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