{"id":239406,"date":"2026-01-18T09:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T09:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/239406\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T09:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T09:19:07","slug":"a-mental-health-hospitals-200-years-of-care-in-oxford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/239406\/","title":{"rendered":"A mental health hospital&#8217;s 200 years of care in Oxford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Places themselves don&#8217;t cure and treat people, that depends on compassionate and competent staff,&#8221; says Dr John Hall, a former head psychologist at Warneford and historian in mental health.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said in the 1700s privately owned &#8220;mad houses&#8221; were built to house people with mental ill health.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Warneford was built with just 40 beds, which was a far cry from the inner city asylums of the time, which would have up to 2,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hall said: &#8220;They were very small, they were built to a much higher standard of accommodation, so many patients would have a single room, whereas in the larger asylums there would be dormitories or 30, 40, 50 patients.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The new hospital treated people who were &#8220;manic&#8221; and &#8220;often expressing delusions&#8221; and also those who at the time who were described as &#8220;melancholic,&#8221; which would now be referred to as &#8220;depressed&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;Places themselves don&#8217;t cure and treat people, that depends on compassionate and competent staff,&#8221; says Dr John Hall,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-239406","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}