Introduction

Many adult mental hospitals began to be organized in a new way, and more concern was shown in the welfare of mental patients with chronic handicaps. Active measures were introduced not merely to get patients out of hospitals as soon as possible, but to improve the quality of hospital life itself. Institutions, and in particular large institutions, which had received most study, did not all conform to a common norm. More enlightened and less repressive measures than had been customary in the past were being introduced in a number of different kinds of establishments dealing with handicapped people—and when this happened, the results were indubitably good.