treatment history
Psychological therapies

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The concept of psychotherapy can be traced back to the “moral treatment” advocated by the founders of early asylums such as the York Retreat. One of their main aims was to restore patients’ self-esteem, through kindness and education. As psychiatrists sought to elevate their social status, many turned away from asylums towards private clinics where patients were reassured that their condition was one of “nervous illness” rather than 'insanity'.

For much of the 20th century psychiatrists followed the theories of ‘psychoanalysis’ developed by Sigmund Freud around 1900. Freud believed that psychological problems were the result of unconscious conflicts over past events (particularly sexual ones). Psychoanalysts rejected the biological classification of mental problems, and embraced the idea that mental illness is universal – we are all slightly schizophrenic, or manic-depressive. Freud’s theories are now unpopular with psychiatrists, but have shaped modern thinking about mental problems.

Also popular in the mid-20th century was social or community therapy, which tried to place patients in a healing community environment. Since the 19th century, Scottish asylums (including Dundee) had used a system of “boarding out”, whereby individual patients would be placed in family homes if it was felt to be more beneficial than remaining in the hospital. From the 1930s, more effort was made to create a community environment within the asylum, encouraging patients to take part in group therapy, occupational therapy and other activities.

In the last 40 years the move has once more been towards the wider community, with the appointment of community psychiatric nurses in the 1960s and the establishment
of group homes and a hostel in Elmgrove, South Road in the 1970s.

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