The Effects of Habit Training on Chronic Schizophrenic Patients

Abstract

It has been recognized for at least 150 years that the organization of wards in public institutions often “results in a lack of adequate attention, provides an unnatural environment and promotes neglect, abuse, injuries and confusion”, Noyes (1953). The atmosphere of the mental hospital back-ward, so different from that existing in the patient's home, creates a social, psychological and physiological “vacuum” and is particularly unfavourable to the long staying schizophrenic patient, who, as a result shows a progressive deterioration in habits and social relationships.An early remedy practised at the York Retreat (Samuel Tuke, 1813) was that the nurses, having gained the patients' confidence, should attempt “to arrest their attention, and fix it on objects opposite to their illusions; to call into action as much as possible, every remaining power and principle of the mind; and to remember that, in the wreck of the intellect, the affections not unfrequently survive.”