Chatterton C
Institute of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Brighton, UK.
Int Hist Nurs J. 2000 Spring;5(2):11-9.
Like other 'Cinderella' services mental health nursing has received much less attention from historians than general nursing. However a study of its history can illuminate such issues as the division of labour, gender, images of nursing, professionalisation and unionisation. Drawing on primary historical sources, including hospital archives and contemporaneous reports and journals, the author considers the role of women in mental health nursing, from its origins to the onset of the NHS in 1948. The development of mental health nursing differed substantially from general nursing. It could be argued that the tensions between the two were never more apparent than in the debate surrounding the registration of nursing in the early twentieth century. Female mental health nurses fighting with police in the Radcliff Strike in 1922 portrays a much less famous image in nursing's history than Florence Nightingale with her lamp. The dichotomy between the custodial nature of the Victorian asylum system and the caring ethos espoused by the advocates of 'moral management' created many tensions. Images of nurses as angels, responding to a calling or vocation, sat uneasily with the large numbers of men working in the asylums and the growth of trade unionism in this period, particularly after the foundation of the National Asylum Workers Union in 1910. The periods of industrial unrest in the mental hospitals of the inter-war years saw women members playing an important role; this has important ramifications for mental health nursing today.
与其他“灰姑娘”式的服务一样，精神科护理在历史学家那里得到的关注远少于普通护理。然而，对其历史的研究可以阐明诸如劳动分工、性别、护理形象、职业化和工会化等问题。作者借鉴包括医院档案以及同期报告和期刊在内的一手历史资料，考察了女性在精神科护理中的角色，从其起源到1948年国民健康服务体系（NHS）的建立。精神科护理的发展与普通护理有很大不同。可以说，两者之间的紧张关系在20世纪初围绕护理注册的辩论中最为明显。1922年拉德克利夫罢工中女性精神科护士与警方对峙的场景，在护理史上的知名度远不及提着灯的弗洛伦斯·南丁格尔。维多利亚时代收容所系统的监管性质与“道德管理”倡导者所秉持的关爱精神之间的二分法造成了许多紧张关系。护士作为天使、响应召唤或使命的形象，与当时收容所里大量男性工作人员以及这一时期工会主义的发展，尤其是在1910年全国收容所工人联盟成立之后，显得格格不入。两次世界大战之间那些年精神病院里的劳资纠纷时期，女性成员发挥了重要作用；这对当今的精神科护理有着重要影响。
