Factors predisposing to institutionalism

All psychiatric patients staying in hospital-supervised boarding homes, and a random sample of 50 long-stay patients in the wards of the only mental hospital in Newfoundland were surveyed to determine if certain premorbid factors predispose to institutionalism ('institutional neurosis'). Three hundred and twenty-four patients were examined. Low intelligence, poor education and disabilities in hearing, speech, locomotion and manual dexterity, were significantly associated with institutionalism. Extremes of age on first admission, celibacy, low occupational status in the patient, or his father, and visual disability did not prove to be associated with institutionalism.

institutionalism may be found among patients in boarding homes; some patients are more susceptible to institutionalism than others; and institutionalism tends to be associated with those biological or social handicaps which affect communication and activity of the patient.