MENTAL HYGIENE READINGS AND DISCUSSION TOPICS, ca. 1943 FALL

Alice Burford Booth, R.N., was a member of the faculty at the Medical College of Virginia School of Nursing, and a specialist in psychiatric nursing. Her papers, presented to the Bjoring Center for Nursing Historical Inquiry by her daughter, Patricia B. Woodard, R.N., include a variety of materials important to understanding mid-twentieth-century developments in the fields of mental health and mental health nursing, as well as strategies of nursing education. Booth assembled reference materials and notes concerning the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses, as well as course outlines, examinations and assignments in the mid-1940s and again in the mid-1960s, when she returned to teaching after a hiatus to raise her family. Booth also collected a number of published documents, not only relative to mental health, but also concerning contraception and other medical issues, nursing education and accreditation, and informational materials on the region's major public psychiatric institutions. Course notes, examinations, and assignments by Booth herself, as a diploma student at the Medical College of Virginia School of Nursing in the early 1940s -- and later as a graduate student at the Payne-Whitney Clinic, Hunter College, and the Columbia University Teachers College -- offer views of general nursing education and certain psychiatric treatment modalities, such as pre-frontal lobotomy, electroshock therapy, and music therapy.