ABSTRACT
A comparison of 'services for the mentally ill' in the 1940s and the early 1980s involves difficulties on several scores. In order to make comparisons, whether in space or in time, it is advisable to have three pieces of intellectual equipment. A frame of reference sufficiently wide to include the subjects to be compared but sufficiently tightly drawn to exclude extraneous concerns; A taxonomy, or relatively value-free set of criteria on which comparisons can be based. The last is agreed vocabulary, so that the same factors can be discussed in different circumstances. There is some out-patient clinic work, carried out by the hospital psychiatrists either in the mental hospital or the nearby general hospital. Some of them would like to have a psychiatric social worker. It would be satisfying to make a statistical comparison between provision in 1948 and provision in the early 1980s, which would at least demonstrate where the major gaps occur.
