Australian Catholics' Lived Experiences of COVID-19 Church Closures.

In 2020, Australian Catholic churches closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, but there has been little qualitative data published on the lived experience of churchgoing Catholics in this period. Data from 175 Australian churchgoing Catholic survey participants who left responses describing their COVID-19 worship experiences as part of a larger project revealed five major themes: 'Church and State', 'Blessings in disguise', 'Polarisation', 'Future proofing', and 'Loss'. Respondents expressed a diverse range of views about the church leadership, lockdowns, conspiracy theories, the merits and deficits of online worship, and their own thriving or suffering during church closures.

Factors Affecting Australian Catholics' Return to Mass After COVID-19 Church Closures.

In 2020, many places of worship closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, raising questions about rates of return to worship after COVID-19. This survey-based study of 806 Australian churchgoing Catholics explores relationships between a range of variables and the rate of return to Mass attendance after church closures. Pre-closure Mass attendance rate strongly and significantly predicted real-life worship during church closures and higher rates of return to Mass attendance after churches reopened. Real-life worship during COVID-19 also strongly predicted return to Mass attendance, and positively mediated the relationship between pre- and post-closure Mass attendance rates. Virtual worship engagement did not significantly predict return to Mass attendance, but positively mediated the relationship between pre- and post-closure Mass attendance rates, with a smaller effect size.

'A matter for conjecture': leucotomy in Western Australia, 1947-70.

Very little has been published on the rise and fall of psychosurgery in Australia. In the mid-twentieth century, Western Australia was the largest but most sparsely-populated of the six Australian States, and its local psychiatry practice was, as one commentator put it, 'backward'. Nonetheless, electroconvulsive therapy was introduced in 1945, and leucotomy in 1947. This paper will explore the introduction of leucotomy to Western Australia in the context of wider national and international trends in psychiatry, and posit some reasons for its decline and abandonment in the 1970s. It will present a narrative reconstruction of the local introduction and practice of leucotomy, using retrieved, reconstructed and previously unpublished data.

Unlikely reformer: Dr Henry Calvert Barnett (1832-1897).

OBJECTIVE: To provide a brief biography of Western Australian colonial lunacy superintendent Dr Henry Calvert Barnett. METHOD: A range of primary sources were consulted. RESULTS: Barnett was a complex man: a caring and forward-thinking practitioner who had a colourful and turbulent private life. CONCLUSIONS: Barnett's contribution to mental health service development in Western Australia was genuine and worthwhile, and should be recognised.

Publish or perish: Dr Victor Webster and cardiazol treatment in Western Australia, 1937-1938.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the role of Dr Victor Henry Webster (1905-1980) in the introduction of cardiazol therapy to Western Australia in November 1937. METHOD: A range of primary and secondary sources were consulted. RESULTS: Webster experimented with cardiazol treatment at Heathcote Reception Home, and published his findings in April 1938, at the same time as Ellery and Lear, but was not able to publish his results in a nationally-recognised journal. As a result, his contribution to early cardiazol treatment in Australia has been largely forgotten. CONCLUSIONS: Webster made a genuine contribution to the introduction of cardiazol treatment in Australia, and his story illustrates the need to publish early findings of new physical therapies.

Dr Digby Moynagh (1911-1963) and the Graylands Day Hospital, 1959-1965.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the establishment of Australia's first psychiatric day hospital in Western Australia in April 1959 by Dr Digby Moynagh (1911-1963). METHODS: A range of primary and secondary sources were consulted. RESULTS: Moynagh was able to establish the Graylands Day Hospital because he had an outsider's perspective, and was familiar with the day hospital model from UK psychiatric literature. However, he was opposed by local medical and political interests, which eventually led to his departure from the State. CONCLUSIONS: The Graylands Day Hospital and Digby Moynagh both contributed towards the process of psychiatric deinstitutionalisation in Australia.

A brief history of forensic mental health services in Western Australia.

OBJECTIVE: To scope the history of forensic mental health services in Western Australia since colonisation. METHOD: A range of primary sources, including archives, reports, and oral histories was consulted. RESULTS: Forensic mental health services were identified as historically poorly managed, under-resourced, and inconsistently delivered. CONCLUSIONS: Current problems with forensic mental health services may be linked to historical factors.

The trouble with Martin O'Meara.

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this article is to highlight the pitfalls of translating historical cases of wartime psychiatric trauma into modern post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). METHOD: We examined all available primary sources relating to the case of Martin O'Meara VC (1885-1935). RESULTS: We found that O'Meara's symptoms are not consistent with a diagnosis of PTSD. CONCLUSIONS: It is more likely that O'Meara developed a form of schizoaffective disorder, or long-lasting trauma-induced psychosis, after World War I.

How mental health clinicians want to evaluate the care they give: a Western Australian study.

OBJECTIVES: To explore how Western Australian mental health clinicians want to evaluate their care. METHODS; Using a participatory action research framework, 10 senior psychiatrists and 11 clinical nurse specialists working in an inpatient mental health setting participated in individual interviews, focus groups and meetings. All interviews were de-identified during transcription and transcripts and field notes were analysed for common themes. RESULTS: Participants identified what they wanted to measure, how they wanted to measure it and how these changes could be implemented. Clinicians stressed the importance of measuring context (physical, clinical and service) and process as well as outcome, and of evaluating care at an individual and service level with consumer involvement. What is known about the topic? Completion rates of mandatory national outcome measures in mental health in Australia are variable and clinicians have mixed views as to their value. Several barriers have been identified as to their use including clinical, resource and ownership issues. What does this paper add? Some studies have identified areas of good practice and elicited practical suggestions for improvement but few have asked clinicians how they actually want to evaluate the care they provide. This study explored how mental health clinicians wanted to evaluate their care, using a participatory action research framework that encouraged participants to pinpoint problems and issues, account for their social context and develop actions to address them. What are the implications for practitioners? Clinicians were enthusiastic for high quality care and evaluation, but pessimistic about their ability to introduce sustainable change. Establishing and supporting active and responsible leadership at service level may solve this, as may encouraging local standard setting and benchmarking in collaboration with consumers and carers.

Too little, too late: mental health nursing education in Western Australia, 1958-1994.

Mental health nursing education in Australia has undergone a significant transition in the last 50 years, influenced by national inquiries, national decisions, and international trends in nursing education. But mental health nursing education had also accumulated decades of history in each state, including sometimes unequal relations with general nursing. Complex inter- and intra-professional relationships at state level influenced this educational transition in each state, and Western Australia provides an example of this influence. Using a range of published and unpublished sources, including oral histories, this paper describes the revision of the mental health nursing curriculum in Western Australia from 1958, responses to the call for transition to the tertiary sector between 1976 and 1984, and the final transition of mental health nursing education to university level in Western Australia in 1994. Mental health nursing's educational standards improved only gradually in Western Australia from 1958 onwards, compared with professional advances in general nursing in the same period. Factors which may have held back these improvements include mental health nursing's professional conservatism, which was outpaced by general nursing's growing radicalization at the national level. A lack of professional confidence and cohesion left mental health nursing unable to respond effectively to rapid external changes in the 1960s and 1970s, and vulnerable to absorption and dominance by general nursing education programs.

A mad mayor of Fremantle: the mysterious illness of Edward Davies.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to illustrate how a person's standing in a small, close-knit community can distort local medical and legal attitudes to their diagnosis. We examined various historical texts describing Edward Davies (1855?1904), Mayor of Fremantle, and the medical, legal and family responses to his illness. CONCLUSIONS: When Davies developed an apparently serious mental illness, his family was able to keep this behaviour hidden for some time. However, when evidence of his illness finally erupted into the public eye, it led to a ground-breaking 1903 case in the WA Supreme Court in Lunacy. It is clear that Davies? defenders wanted him to be diagnosed and treated as an alcoholic, when in fact he may have had late onset psychosis, complicated by alcohol abuse. With the increasing amount of historical material available through Australian digitized newspaper collections, new scope is opening up for retrospective diagnosis.

Reflections, memories, and sources 'The cleanest man on earth': Harcourt Whipple Ellis and the NLA Australian newspapers.

The National Library of Australia (NLA) Australian Newspapers project went public in July 2008, but many historians and researchers are as yet unaware of its existence, or of its great potential for their research. This article will demonstrate the revolutionary potential of this project for the history of medicine in Australia. Using the case ofa largely-forgotten Western Australian chemist, dentist, and optician, Harcourt Whipple Ellis, a search of the NLA Australian Newspapers project produces a substantial amount of information on his at times scandalous career, a general physical description, a verbatim quotation, and many other witnesses statements attributed to him. These newspaper articles flesh out' Ellis, and also provide valuable insights into early-twentieth-century life in Perth.

A lesson in vigilance? Mental health nursing training in Western Australia, 1903­1958.

Researching examples of historical hospital-based training can provide some measure of the improvements in mental health nursing education which have taken place over time. Claremont Hospital for the Insane was the only major stand-alone psychiatric institution in Western Australia, and recent research into its mental health nursing training program between 1903 and 1958 provides an example of how nursing training could suffer in the hospital setting. There is much to learn from Claremont's experience: Not just to measure how far mental health nursing has progressed since that time, but also as a reminder of why and how accountability, supervision, and independent auditing all help to ensure quality delivery of training.