In the first of a two-part enquiry into the treatment of mental illness - the 'Cinderella of the Social Services' - Gordon Snell looks at Middlewood Hospital and its staff, struggling to provide some sort of psychiatric first-aid. Next week's programme looks at new approaches to the definition and treatment of mental illness. Middlewood Hospital on the outskirts of Sheffield was built 100 years ago as the South Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum. Today it is a typical psychiatric hospital: too big, understaffed, housing many patients, who are only there because they have nowhere else to go. There are 1,300 patients in Middlewood, many of them living in 50 bed, long-stay wards, staffed only by two overworked nurses. Each year over 150,000 people are admitted to mental hospitals. Most will be treated in institutions like Middlewood.