Indeed, the antecedents of research in this instance are related to a close concern with the area under study as well as with settings of mental-health services. Six years ago, prior to this thesis, the researcher worked in an ancillary position for the Trust in the area under study in this thesis. At the age of just eighteen, the researcher found himself working in several psychiatric wards: termed, at the time before the institutions closure, psychi.-geriatric, chronic/ long-stay, closed and acute wards. Deeply concerned with issues of mental health in institutional and community settings even then, the researcher was employed in an ancillary post that required moving between the wards of the psychiatric hospital.