‘Gradual spiritual formation' - postcolonial mental handicap nursing in Ireland 1919-70

Sweeney, JF

Abstract

In this study a postcolonial and social historical framework was utilised to examine the
development of mental handicap nursing in Ireland. The research derives from a historiographical
study of documentary records for the period 1919-70 in Britain and Ireland to investigate the role
played by key stakeholders in the development of what at the time of writing is known as
intellectual disability nursing. Primary sources were examined to construct a narrative chronology
of the role of specific Catholic religious orders, the Irish Division psychiatrists of the Roval
Medico-Psychological Association (RMPA), the State and nursing regulatory bodies. The main
argument of the thesis is that a confluence of medical, social, religious and nursing ideas about
specialist care for people with intellectual disabilities in the nineteen-fifties led to the development
of a new workforce i.e. mental handicap nurses.
Mental handicap nursing emerged in the aftermath of Ireland's struggle for self-determination from
postcolonial oppression. The Department of Local Government and General Nursing Council for
Ireland (GNCI) opposed a mental deficiency colony solution to a legacy of workhouses and
asylums. Training by a weak psychiatric establishment was distrusted because of the profession's
links to Britain. The Irish Government as part of a policy to move growing numbers from Counts
Homes, funded specialist residential schools developed by Catholic religious orders. Staffing needs
during the nineteen-forties led one order to request the RMPA to train its psychiatric nurses for the
mental deficiency register. Since the GNCI had closed its mental deficiency register in 1923 and
opposed medical involvement in nursing education, nurses were trained under the RMPA scheme
with approval of the General Nursing Council (GNC) for England and Wales. Encouraged by the
Department of Health, a new nursing regulatory body introduced mental handicap nurse training in
1959. Though a Commission of Inquiry in 1965 endorsed the new workforce, divergent psychiatric
and religious discourses on the nature of mental handicap led to enduring tensions as to the role of
this practitioner thus underpinning a tenuous position within nursing.

Citation

Sweeney, J. ‘Gradual spiritual formation' - postcolonial mental handicap nursing in Ireland 1919-70. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Aug 19, 2021
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2008