Male Admissions to Broadmoor Hospital

Abstract

Broadmoor Hospital is one of three Special Hospitals provided for the treatment of patients of ‘dangerous or violent propensities', under conditions of security. By definition, it caters for a unique and highly selected group of patients; patients who it is thought are too dangerous to be cared for in more conventional psychiatric facilities. Studies of such selected groups of patients may help us towards a better understanding of the relationship between dangerous behaviour and mental illness. Special groups of patients have been studied (Blackburn, 1970; Le Couteur, 1966; McGrath, 1958), but apart from a general paper by Gould (1957), and a recent research report by Black (1973) remarkably little is known either about the characteristics of those patients who go into hospitals, or about what happens to them after they leave the hospitals.