MENTAL DEFICIENCY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 21 November 1927, Page 7

MENTAL DEFICIENCY

PROBLEMS OF THE INSANE DR. GRAY’S INVESTIGATIONS. EUGENICS’ BOARD RECOMMENDED. The Hon. J. A. Young (Minister of Health) has received from Dr. Theodore G. Gray, Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals, the first portion of his report on the tour of investigation which he recently made in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and the Continent. The two main fields of inquiry were the problems of mental deficiency and modern methods in the care and treatment of the insane; and the first part of the report now submitted to the Minister deals mainly with the problems of mental deficiency. Dr. Gray says:— “While there is little difficulty in recognising the more gross type of mental deficiency such as the imbecile and idiot, there is a very large class, the members of which are socially inadequate, but who do not come within the definitions embodied in the present Mental Defectives Act. This latter class is dealt with in England under the designation of 4 moral imbecile.’ There are many objections to this designation, for which Dr. Gray proposes to substitute the name ‘ social defective,’ with the following definition:— ‘Persons in whose case there exists mental deficiency associated with or manifested by anti-social conduct and who require State supervision and control for their own protection or for the protection of others.’ This definition applies particularly to that large and difficult group in which the defect apparently lies primarily not in the intellect but in the emotions and manifests itself in disorders of conduct. Mental deficiency should not be regarded so much as a disease entity, hut rather as a social problem. There is no cure for mental deficiency in the individual, and no panacea will remove it from the country; but I believe that we can gradually assume control of its incidence, and diminish the economic burden it imposes on the community, provided that we take certain measures to be detailed hereafter,

WORD OF WARNING.

“It is necessary at this preliminary stage to interpose an earnest word of warning,”’ continues Dr. Gray. “In each of the 13 countries I visited I found a growing public interest in eugenic matters, and as often happens when a scientific matter has an intimate popular application, this interest was sometimes accompanied by much uninformed enthusiasm and clamour for the institution of measures purporting io effect a dramatic removal of the menace. There is no universal ‘best system’ in this or the allied problem of dealing with the insane, and each counmust evolve its own method, guided and restricted by its own peculiar racial, geographic, and economic situations. We have much knowledge: we have more theory. Let us, in the meantime, be content to build on a sure, safe, and broad foundation of proved essential facts.”

Dr. Gray emphasises the necessity for a thorough psychiatric examination of each feeble-minded person. He strongly deprecates the growing tendency to depend upon so-called “intelligence tests,” which he regards rather as tests of the opportunities which the child has had of acquiring knowledge rather than as a test of innate intelligence. “ The nio>t important preliminary necessity in any scheme for the cure of feeble-minded persons is the taking of a census and the compiling of a register,” states Dr. Gray. “I am of opinion that this duty should he carried out by a central co-ordinating and registering authority, a eugenics board. My experience in England and on the Continent was that dual control considerably impairs the efficiency of any scheme such as this. In New Zealand at the present time these matters are dealt with not only by Government departments such as the special schools branch of the Eudcation Department. (Continued on Next Column).

the prisons and the mental hospitals but also by various private imperfectly co-operating organisations. There are frequent differences of opinion between medical men, teachers, psychologists and judicial authorities as to the disposal of cases. lam satisfied that the unification of control is of paramount importance and that this could best he attained by the creation of a eugenics board the function of which could be broadly defined ns being the social control of the feeble-minded. This control would involve the administration of all special schools, day and residential: but the special classes attached to the day schools should he strictly reserved for genuine retardates as determined by the officers of the eugenics board, and should be conducted as heretofore by the Education Department.

“There is a large class of higher grade defectives of the so-called moral imbecile and moron type whose departure from the normal is manifested on the moral and emotional planes rather than in an obvious defect of in telligence,” adds Dr. Gray. “These people, along writh many who may be considered more or less as borderline cases, are to be found in institutions for young folk of delinquent and antisocial tendencies; and it is desirable on all grounds that the care of these classes should be included in the duties of the eugenics board. The peculiar problems and difficulties of these children could thus be adjusted on broad, humane, and common-sense lines, unhampered on the one hand by mental hospital or prison association, and free from the somewhat rigid pedagogic requirements and traditions of a department the function of which, after all, is the education of normal children.”