London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
London County Council 1956
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for London County Council]
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The following table shows the rate of referral of cases to the mental welfare officers per 10,000 population in each age-status group. In general the figures reveal a much lower rate of referral of married persons than single, widowed or divorced persons. This difference is more striking because approximately one-sixth of the married persons seen by the mental welfare officers were in fact separated but they had to be included in the 'married' group because there is no record of the number of 'married but separated' persons in the population.
| Single | Married | Widowed | Divorced | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Age group | Male | Female | Male | Female | Male | Female | Male | Female |
Where there are less than 20 cases in a group, the figures are shown in brackets.
Dr. Herd is indebted to the mental welfare officers for their co-operation and ready
acceptance of increased clerical work and fact finding, and to the statistical section for
their great help and interest in the analysis of the recorded data.
Domiciliary
care and
after-care
This work was considerably restricted at times during the year owing to shortage
of staff, but during the last two months, when the full establishment of four psychiatric
social workers was employed, there was a marked rise in the number of patients referred
and the total for the year was slightly higher than in 1955.
This service is now being used as an expert advisory bureau by other agencies already
involved with patients whose problems are found to have a psychiatric cause. The
extent to which the advice of the Council's psychiatric social workers is being sought in
this way has not been recorded in the figures below, which include only those cases
interviewed personally by the psychiatric social workers, but a substantial number of
cases has been dealt with by discussions which have enabled the agency concerned with
the case to continue to deal with the patient's problems. The discussions are frequently
time-consuming but there is evidence of the value of the advice given in the increasing
number of cases in which it is being sought. It does, moreover, avoid the need for a
second social worker to visit the patients.