Catatan

Secure Lives: The Meaning and Importance of Culture in Secure Hospital Care examines the meaning and role of organizational culture in high-security psychiatric hospitals. Annie Bartlett explores how everyday life, social relationships, power structures, and interactions between patients and healthcare professionals shape the culture of mental healthcare institutions.

The book is based on anthropological research and field observations of life in a high-security psychiatric hospital in England during the 1990s. The author presents the experiences and perspectives of both patients and staff to understand how institutional rules, healthcare policies, surveillance, and interpersonal relationships influence everyday hospital life.

The discussion covers the relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior, the development of forensic psychiatric services, everyday ward life, mechanisms of power, patient surveillance, and organizational cultural change. It also examines the balance between security requirements, patient detention, individual rights, and the provision of care that supports recovery and reintegration into the community.

Beyond its historical perspective, the book offers a critical understanding of the importance of organizational culture in creating safe, humane, and patient-centered healthcare environments.

This book is particularly relevant to mental healthcare professionals, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, hospital administrators, criminology researchers, and academics in social anthropology and mental health.