INVESTIGATION INTO THE CINEMATOGRAPH DETERIORATION IN BEHAVIOUR"
AND
Dear Sir,
Your correspondents rightly raise the question of more information. and details were left out for reasons of space, but some 70 foolscap Pages of notes were made during this investigation.
Tables
Definition of misbehaviour will vary from hospital to hospital. that reason, comparison was made in the same hospital under the
administration
of the
For same
patients before and after the beginning of the Cambridge House Hospital, misbehaviour was that behaviour considered sufficiently serious by the Charge Nurses, all men of many years' experience, to be entered in the day and night report books. Although this definition gives no information to those who do not know this hospital, the comparison of behaviour before and after the beginning of
film entertainments.
same
At
the cinematograph entertainments was reliable in the sense that standards yere approximately constant during the two periods. Abnormal noise by ttself was certainly considered a form of misbehaviour. It disturbed the other patients. The effect of each type of film shown is lews, interest and feature films were shown results of the
analysis
of the feature films
not at
were
possible to determine, as performance. The
every
inconclusive.
I
agree entirely with your correspondents in their refusal to accept the thesis that "all films have an influence that is bad." It may well be that only some films affected the patients adversely, others having no, or a good, effect. The facts that the behaviour of 18 patients remained stationary and that 34 showed improvement in their behaviour showed that many were not adversely affected.