Treatment environment and staff ideology in two British mental hospitals

Hypotheses were derived from assumptions inherent in two contrasting conceptions of a treatment environment, attitudinal and ecological. Research was conducted in two different British mental hospitals, using scales from the OMI and the CTE. As predicted, the OMI scales were related only to staff attributes and did not discriminate among environments of institutions or units that differed in program, philosophy, organization, or type of patients. CTE scales distinguished between hospital treatment environments and wards. There was slight evidence that observed attributes influenced ecological measures of the objective treatment environment, or that staff ideology had any substantial impact upon treatment environments.