Summary and Implications

The Social Rehabilitation Unit at Belmont Hospital is an experiment in milieu therapy. Its work is part of the larger movement sometimes termed the ‘third revolution in psychiatry’. The Unit developed in response to the convergence of a number of favourable forces during and after the Second World War in England. ¹ These included the increasing awareness of the inadequacies of the conventional ‘custodial’ system of hospital care for the psychically ill, the growth of a national sense of responsibility for dealing with pervasive health problems, and the influence of psychoanalytic and social scientific ideas in psychiatry generally.