ABSTRACT
In the late nineteenth century, nursing began to emerge as a profession. The first school to prepare psychiatric nurses opened in 1882 at McLean Hospital in Waverly, Massachusetts. Although this 2-year program was an attempt to provide mental hospitals with better educated workers, the curriculum was little more than a modified medical-surgical curriculum which focused little on the psychological needs of the patients. Its main thrust was to provide skill in the physical care of psychiatric patients. Nurses were taught, not to treat the mentally ill, but to be kind and tolerant of them. The focus remained on custodial care.
