The Nottingham Psychiatric Archive

In the 1960s, before the Nottingham Medical School started, John Wing and George Brown used Mapperley Hospital as one of the three hospitals in their study of institutionalism and schizophrenia. Quite independently, John Giggs (Geography Department, University of Nottingham) also studied the geographical distribution of schizophrenia in Nottingham. The Nottingham psychiatric case register, started by Miss Eileen Brooke of the Department of Health, was used for these and other studies, although not all of them resulted in publications.

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 One of the first things on the arrival of the Medical School in 1971 was to plan to renovate and computerize the then almost defunct case-register. It was put into electronic form from 1973 onwards, funded by the DHSS and programmed by Ed Kontny. This proved very useful when Nottingham became the UK field station in the WHO Determinants of Outcome (DOSMeD) study, 1978 – 1980. Dr John Howat used the register when doing a large long-term follow up study of previously long-stay patients, and it was also very useful to Dr Margaret Oates during the development and studies of services for mothers and babies that she carried out with great distinction. During the 1980s the geographical sectorisation of adult psychiatric services was developed, assisted by data from the psychiatric case register. The case register team was a leading member of a European Case Register study group organized by the European Office of the WHO, and was also a member of the 8 UK Case Register groups that cooperated to produce several unique publications.

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 Once the 1978 WHO DOSMED study had demonstrated that Nottingham provided a good environment for some types of epidemiological work, publications on epidemiological topics and the use of services continued. Professors Glynn Harrison, Peter Jones and Gillian Doody and their colleagues carried out large and important studies on a variety of topics, mainly to do with schizophrenia and acute psychoses, such as the AESOP study, carrying on the methods and traditions of the original WHO study. The AESOP study continues to produce a variety of follow -up studies.

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 Duncan Macmillan also established a special service for the elderly in the 1950s, and in the 1970’s and 1980’s Professor Tom Arie set up his unique Health Care of the Elderly service, combining physical and mental healthcare services for the elderly.

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 No other place has had a similar set of studies carried out on a comparatively stable population (several of the studies using the same basic WHO methods) over such a long period of time.

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