Claire Hilton
Biographic Data
| ID | 4466868 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Claire Hilton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Claire |
| FAMILY NAME | Hilton |
| SIGNATURE | HILTON C |
| AFFILIATIONS | NHS Digital |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6697-8373 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
An interview with Claire Hilton
Purpose This paper aims to provide a record of the 1960’s development of thinking and practice associated with promoting the care and dignity of older people. Design/methodology/approach Interview. Findings This interview sheds light on the development of health and social care policy and practice in the UK, particularly how the safeguarding of adults emerged out of work on the promotion of the rights of older people with mental health needs, inc…
George Stephen Penny (1885–1964)
Amid extensive press coverage, George Stephen Penny (1885–1964) was tried for murder in 1923. He was found ‘guilty but insane’ due to ‘confusional insanity’ associated with malaria which he suffered during World War I. Penny was admitted to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum at a time of great public concern about inadequate and cruel care in mental institutions, but he was treated with humanity and respect. Penny’s story also reveals much about c…
Janet Weston, Looking after Miss Alexander
Journal Article Janet Weston, Looking after Miss Alexander: Care, Mental Capacity, and the Court of Protection in Mid-Twentieth-Century England Get access Janet Weston, Looking after Miss Alexander: Care, Mental Capacity, and the Court of Protection in Mid-Twentieth-Century England, Montreal and Kingston; London; Chicago: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023. Pp. 172. £21.99. Paperback. Also, open access so free to download. ISBN 978-0-2280-1468…
‘I have to-day seen all the 671 patients in residence in this institution’
In the 1920s, patients and former patients produced oral and written accounts of their mental hospital experiences. Many aimed to inform the public about the institutions and to improve standards of care, but their views were usually ignored. The assumption that mental disorders affected all aspects of a person’s judgement, plus defensive and disparaging attitudes of hospital authorities and formal committees of inquiry, contributed to this. Vari…
A Tale of Two Inquiries
The government acknowledged scandalously poor care of long‐stay patients in National Health Service ( NHS ) hospitals in 1969. This followed the Ely Hospital inquiry, which emerged in the aftermath of revelations of abuse at seven hospitals described in Barbara Robb's book Sans Everything: A Case to Answer (1967). Allegations in Sans Everything and at Ely were similar. However, the inquiry committees which investigated, ‘disproved’ those in Sans …
Dr Russell Barton, Belsen concentration camp and 1960s psychiatric hospitals in England
Russell Barton was one of the 96 London medical student volunteers who went to Belsen concentration camp in Germany, 2 weeks after its liberation in 1945, to help survivors. Barton later became a psychiatrist. In 1968, he wrote about the medical students’ experiences and his understanding of Belsen based on his time there, in an invited article in Purnell’s History of the Second World War. He perceived parallels between the regimes controlling Be…
Psychogeriatrics in England in the 1950s
In the 1950s, the population aged over 65 years continued to increase, and older people occupied mental hospital beds disproportionately. A few psychiatrists and geriatricians demonstrated what could be done to improve the wellbeing of mentally unwell older people, who were usually labelled as having irreversible ‘senile dementia’. Martin Roth demonstrated that ‘senile dementia’ comprised five different disorders, some of which were reversible. T…
Developing Psychogeriatric Services in England, 1979–89
Clinical knowledge and experience, and demographic changes, indicated the need to ensure provision of adequate ‘psychogeriatric’ services to provide treatment for mentally ill older people (generally over 65 years). Various factors influenced the provision of these services, including politics, economics and stereotypical negative attitudes towards older people. Clinicians successfully led service developments, often unsupported by central govern…
Psychiatrists, mental health provision and ‘senile dementia’ in England, 1940s–1979
Until around 1979, ‘confused’ or mentally unwell people over 65 years of age tended to be labelled as having ‘senile dementia’. Senile dementia was usually regarded as a single, inevitably hopeless condition, despite gradually accumulating clinical and pathological evidence to the contrary. Specific psychiatric services for mental illness in older people began to emerge in the 1950s, but by 1969 there were fewer than 10 dedicated services nationa…
Developing Psychogeriatric Services in England
Attitudes towards autonomy and personal freedom changed in the 1960s in England, but hardly touched the needs of dependent older people. In particular, deeply embedded public and professional attitudes and priorities linked to little change in ‘psychogeriatric’ treatment for those who were mentally unwell. Total beds in psychiatric hospitals decreased, but those remaining were increasingly and disproportionately occupied by older people receiving…
The provision of mental health services in England for people over 65 years of age, 1970—78
The twentieth century saw an increasing number of people living into old age, and consequently a higher prevalence of age-related chronic degenerative brain disorders. By 1971 the mental hospitals were almost half full with people over 65 years of age. Thus plans to close the mental hospitals meant that the development of community mental health services for older people was a necessity. Although there was a multi-disciplinary focus on the care o…
Changes between the 1959 and 1983 Mental Health Acts (England & Wales), with particular reference to consent to treatment for electroconvulsive therapy
Consent to treatment was not mentioned in the Mental Health Act 1959, assuming that a detained patient could be treated against his/her will. However, consent was a cr ucial new feature in the 1983 Act.This paper traces and evaluates the issues, debates, people and organizations in England and Wales who advocated and enabled this important change to come about, using examples from the clinical practice of electroconvulsive therapy
The origins of old age psychiatry in Britain in the 1940s
In the 1940s, some of the most influential psychiatrists of their day such as David K. Henderson and Aubrey Lewis were taking an active interest in the well-being of older people. Spurred on by the fears of a rising population of older people, overcrowding in mental hospitals, social changes and an awareness of the lack of knowledge of older people’s mental illnesses, they and others began to explore further the mental health needs of older peopl…
Psychiatric Disorder in Young Adults in Jamaica
Introduction Much research into psychiatric disorder in Jamaica has investigated psychotic illness but studies of neurotic disorders are lacking. This study investi gated psychiatric disorder in a group of mainly urban, lower social class, young adults who had been regular clinic attenders as a physically healthy control group in a cohort study of sickle cell disease. Method The study was cross-sectional in design. Subjects, 44 male and 45 female…
Dr Russell Barton, Belsen concentration camp and 1960s psychiatric hospitals in England
Russell Barton was one of the 96 London medical student volunteers who went to Belsen concentration camp in Germany, 2 weeks after its liberation in 1945, to help survivors. Barton later became a psychiatrist. In 1968, he wrote about the medical students’ experiences and his understanding of Belsen based on his time there, in an invited article in Purnell’s History of the Second World War. He perceived parallels between the regimes controlling Be…
A Tale of Two Inquiries
The government acknowledged scandalously poor care of long‐stay patients in National Health Service ( NHS ) hospitals in 1969. This followed the Ely Hospital inquiry, which emerged in the aftermath of revelations of abuse at seven hospitals described in Barbara Robb's book Sans Everything: A Case to Answer (1967). Allegations in Sans Everything and at Ely were similar. However, the inquiry committees which investigated, ‘disproved’ those in Sans …
Developing Psychogeriatric Services in England, 1979–89
Clinical knowledge and experience, and demographic changes, indicated the need to ensure provision of adequate ‘psychogeriatric’ services to provide treatment for mentally ill older people (generally over 65 years). Various factors influenced the provision of these services, including politics, economics and stereotypical negative attitudes towards older people. Clinicians successfully led service developments, often unsupported by central govern…
Psychiatric Disorder in Young Adults in Jamaica
Introduction Much research into psychiatric disorder in Jamaica has investigated psychotic illness but studies of neurotic disorders are lacking. This study investi gated psychiatric disorder in a group of mainly urban, lower social class, young adults who had been regular clinic attenders as a physically healthy control group in a cohort study of sickle cell disease. Method The study was cross-sectional in design. Subjects, 44 male and 45 female…
The origins of old age psychiatry in Britain in the 1940s
In the 1940s, some of the most influential psychiatrists of their day such as David K. Henderson and Aubrey Lewis were taking an active interest in the well-being of older people. Spurred on by the fears of a rising population of older people, overcrowding in mental hospitals, social changes and an awareness of the lack of knowledge of older people’s mental illnesses, they and others began to explore further the mental health needs of older peopl…
Changes between the 1959 and 1983 Mental Health Acts (England & Wales), with particular reference to consent to treatment for electroconvulsive therapy
Consent to treatment was not mentioned in the Mental Health Act 1959, assuming that a detained patient could be treated against his/her will. However, consent was a cr ucial new feature in the 1983 Act.This paper traces and evaluates the issues, debates, people and organizations in England and Wales who advocated and enabled this important change to come about, using examples from the clinical practice of electroconvulsive therapy
The provision of mental health services in England for people over 65 years of age, 1970—78
The twentieth century saw an increasing number of people living into old age, and consequently a higher prevalence of age-related chronic degenerative brain disorders. By 1971 the mental hospitals were almost half full with people over 65 years of age. Thus plans to close the mental hospitals meant that the development of community mental health services for older people was a necessity. Although there was a multi-disciplinary focus on the care o…
Psychiatrists, mental health provision and ‘senile dementia’ in England, 1940s–1979
Until around 1979, ‘confused’ or mentally unwell people over 65 years of age tended to be labelled as having ‘senile dementia’. Senile dementia was usually regarded as a single, inevitably hopeless condition, despite gradually accumulating clinical and pathological evidence to the contrary. Specific psychiatric services for mental illness in older people began to emerge in the 1950s, but by 1969 there were fewer than 10 dedicated services nationa…
Developing Psychogeriatric Services in England
Attitudes towards autonomy and personal freedom changed in the 1960s in England, but hardly touched the needs of dependent older people. In particular, deeply embedded public and professional attitudes and priorities linked to little change in ‘psychogeriatric’ treatment for those who were mentally unwell. Total beds in psychiatric hospitals decreased, but those remaining were increasingly and disproportionately occupied by older people receiving…
Psychogeriatrics in England in the 1950s
In the 1950s, the population aged over 65 years continued to increase, and older people occupied mental hospital beds disproportionately. A few psychiatrists and geriatricians demonstrated what could be done to improve the wellbeing of mentally unwell older people, who were usually labelled as having irreversible ‘senile dementia’. Martin Roth demonstrated that ‘senile dementia’ comprised five different disorders, some of which were reversible. T…
Developing Psychogeriatric Services in England, 1979–89
Clinical knowledge and experience, and demographic changes, indicated the need to ensure provision of adequate ‘psychogeriatric’ services to provide treatment for mentally ill older people (generally over 65 years). Various factors influenced the provision of these services, including politics, economics and stereotypical negative attitudes towards older people. Clinicians successfully led service developments, often unsupported by central govern…
Dr Russell Barton, Belsen concentration camp and 1960s psychiatric hospitals in England
Russell Barton was one of the 96 London medical student volunteers who went to Belsen concentration camp in Germany, 2 weeks after its liberation in 1945, to help survivors. Barton later became a psychiatrist. In 1968, he wrote about the medical students’ experiences and his understanding of Belsen based on his time there, in an invited article in Purnell’s History of the Second World War. He perceived parallels between the regimes controlling Be…
A Tale of Two Inquiries
The government acknowledged scandalously poor care of long‐stay patients in National Health Service ( NHS ) hospitals in 1969. This followed the Ely Hospital inquiry, which emerged in the aftermath of revelations of abuse at seven hospitals described in Barbara Robb's book Sans Everything: A Case to Answer (1967). Allegations in Sans Everything and at Ely were similar. However, the inquiry committees which investigated, ‘disproved’ those in Sans …
‘I have to-day seen all the 671 patients in residence in this institution’
In the 1920s, patients and former patients produced oral and written accounts of their mental hospital experiences. Many aimed to inform the public about the institutions and to improve standards of care, but their views were usually ignored. The assumption that mental disorders affected all aspects of a person’s judgement, plus defensive and disparaging attitudes of hospital authorities and formal committees of inquiry, contributed to this. Vari…
George Stephen Penny (1885–1964)
Amid extensive press coverage, George Stephen Penny (1885–1964) was tried for murder in 1923. He was found ‘guilty but insane’ due to ‘confusional insanity’ associated with malaria which he suffered during World War I. Penny was admitted to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum at a time of great public concern about inadequate and cruel care in mental institutions, but he was treated with humanity and respect. Penny’s story also reveals much about c…
Janet Weston, Looking after Miss Alexander
Journal Article Janet Weston, Looking after Miss Alexander: Care, Mental Capacity, and the Court of Protection in Mid-Twentieth-Century England Get access Janet Weston, Looking after Miss Alexander: Care, Mental Capacity, and the Court of Protection in Mid-Twentieth-Century England, Montreal and Kingston; London; Chicago: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023. Pp. 172. £21.99. Paperback. Also, open access so free to download. ISBN 978-0-2280-1468…
An interview with Claire Hilton
Purpose This paper aims to provide a record of the 1960’s development of thinking and practice associated with promoting the care and dignity of older people. Design/methodology/approach Interview. Findings This interview sheds light on the development of health and social care policy and practice in the UK, particularly how the safeguarding of adults emerged out of work on the promotion of the rights of older people with mental health needs, inc…
Medicine (13 works) · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices (12 works) · Psychiatry (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Mental health (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Gerontology (7 works) · Older people (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Neurology and Historical Studies (5 works)