Women's experiences of hospital admission

Abstract

The primary aim of this study was to examine women's experiences of inpatient psychiatric services. A secondary aim was to use the emerging themes in service planning and to develop an evaluation tool. Focus groups and individual interviews with women in receipt of psychiatric services in Croydon were used. The findings suggest continuity with both negative and positive aspects of institutional care described before the policy of community care was introduced. The attempts to 'normalize' institutional care by desegregating wards appear rather to have compounded problems faced by women. Women were clear about what they felt they wanted and needed. Women are dissatisfied about many aspects of care aside from the problems associated specifically with mixed sex wards. This suggests that sexual segregation of wards alone is a necessary but an insufficient measure to improve inpatient care. The findings can inform development of a women-only service in Croydon and of a tool to evaluate it.

‘Safe enough in here?’: patients' expectations and experiences of feeling safe in an acute psychiatric inpatient ward

“…). This sense of protection was replaced by an experience of threat arising from perceptions of the other patients and their behaviour (Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health , Kohen , Baker , Cutting & Henderson , Quirk et al . ).…”

“…, Jones et al . ) and sometimes linked with the diagnostic mix of patients on the ward (Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health , Kohen , Baker , Cutting & Henderson , Sun et al . ).…”

Consumer perspectives on the therapeutic value of a psychiatric environment

“…Treatment within a clinical environment can be experienced as a source of shame, with associated feelings of personal failure (Jones & Crossley, 2008). For some consumers, treatment is experienced as directly stigmatizing (Cutting & Henderson, 2002;Hagen & Nixon, 2001). Further, the cultural competence of staff can be an issue of concern for some consumers (Gilburt et al, 2008).…”

‘Living in an alternative reality’: adolescents’ experiences of psychiatric inpatient care

“…‘Living in an Alternative Reality’ emerged as the core category in the current model as it reflected the unusual nature of the overall hospitalisation experience from the adolescents’ perspective. The sense of living in a different world during hospitalisation has been reported by other groups of psychiatric patients and has been associated with the dehumanising and institutional nature of inpatient care and an overall feeling of being cut off from ‘normality’ (Cutting & Henderson, 2002; Letendre, 1997); seemingly reflected in the current categories of ‘Feeling Restricted’ and ‘Feeling Disconnected’.…”