Mental illness and hospitalisation in Malta

Abstract

In my dissertation I attempt to outline the evolving development in the psychiatric field and how it influenced the mentally ill in Malta. First, I will dedicate part of the dissertation to give a brief overview and introduce such subject. The second chapter will focus on the origins of the hospitalisation of the mentally ill, including the services offered at Mount Carmel Hospital. This part of the work will investigate how the hospitalisation of the mentally ill influenced the overall mental health care in Malta. As already stated, due to the stigma attached to mental illnesses and patient’s privacy I was put under very strict conditions to research through the records available at Mount Carmel Hospital. Though I was able to obtain a lot of resourceful information, I was not allowed to go through certain material as this fell under the Data Protection Act. Nevertheless, through the available resources at the hospital I managed to get a deeper understanding of the hospitalisation of the mentally ill in Malta. To examine my findings closely I will plot down the number of admissions, discharges and classification of diagnosis for patients in the hospital during this time. The third chapter will evaluate the treatment used for mental illnesses. Surprisingly enough, though the concept of mental health was not much popular in the past century, records show numerous amounts of therapies that attempted to cure or relieve mental illnesses. Many treatments were constantly discovered. Actually, one will be able to note how and to what extent Mount Carmel Hospital adapted its resources to introduce such treatments. Besides that, this part of the dissertation will show how the development of modern treatments affected the mental wellbeing of the mentally ill and also their social life in the community. In conjugation with the previous chapters, the fourth section of the dissertation will revolve around and goes into some detail on the treatments used and services offered outside Mount Carmel Hospital. I explored how the existent Hospital has evolved through the years both structurally constantly influenced by medical and psychiatric advances. This chapter identifies the reasons why the mentally ill started to resort to treatments and services outside the hospital. In the fifth chapter, focuses on the associations that were formed to support the mentally ill in Malta. As stated earlier, though the importance of mental health was not given the relevance that one expects today, groups of individuals who promoted the welfare of the mentally ill were already active. The material which these voluntary societies published proved to be much useful for my study as it recorded various developments happening in the mental health care and the impact it left on the patients. Besides that, these associations reflected the enthusiasm which grew to that existent at the present towards the supporting of people with mental difficulties.