ABSTRACT
In England and Wales hospital services for the mentally handicapped are provided by the regional hospital boards, while local government departments provide services for patients in the community. Public hospitals for psychiatric patients were developed during the latter half of the nineteenth century when many of the existing institutions were built. The 1959 Act abolished these terms on the recommendation of the Royal Commission and substituted two grades for the former three: ‘subnormality’ and ‘severe subnormality’ (revised recently to ‘mentally handicapped’ and ‘severely mentally handicapped’). The responsibility for training mentally handicapped children has now been transferred from the department of health to the department of education and science. In addition, patients classified as ‘psychopaths’ (formerly termed ‘moral defectives’) may be admitted to subnormality hospitals, as well as to hospitals for the mentally ill, regardless of their level of the intelligence.
