The Hospitalized Child — His Emotional Needs

Abstract

HOSPITALIZATION as a significant psychologic event in childhood has been a focus of concern, investigation and action for two decades. The postwar interest in psychiatry, combined with the therapeutic controls made possible by antibiotics, encouraged a surge in the trend toward humanizing the care of children. During the decade 1944–53 several basic studies were undertaken that gave rise to dramatic and frequently controversial revisions; in the following decade the changes seem to have been less publicized but more widespread. Because these changes have often been on the basis of personal conviction more than on empirical evidence, objections have risen among . . .