MENTAL DISEASE

Hokitika Guardian, 12 August 1926, Page 4

MENTAL DISEASE

expert on its causes

XBW ZEALAND’S RECOVERY

RATE

WELLINGTON, Aug. 10,

“The sooner the public understands that mental disease is for the most part 5 a symptom and expression of bodily disease the better, ’ remaxks Six Truby King. Inspector-General of tal Hospitals, in his annual report to Parliament. He revives an official statement made by him twenty yeuis ago as expressing what appears to him the most important considerations for t |,c mental well-being and efficiency for the race: “If women in general were rendered more fit for maternity, if instrumental deliveries were obviated as far as possible, if infants were nourished by their mothers, and boys and e-irls were given rational education, the main supplies of population for our asvlums. gaols and slums would he cut off at the sources. Further, T do not hesitate to say that a very remarkable improvement would take place in the physical, mental and moral condition of the whole community.” The report shows that the inmates of mental hospitals are 2921 males, 2:53d females, total 5257, an increase of 120. Discharges were 425. an increase of 53. There arc 149 voluntary hoarders in mental hospitals. 0 UTP ATIENTS’ CLINIC.

Tn Wellington, where a commencement was made with out-patient clinics at the general hospital, an assured success is recorded. The opinion of the Wellington Hospital superintendent is that the public have a high regard for the advice and treatment, while the medical superintendent of Porirun Mental Hospital states: “As a result of visiting the clinic, incipient mental or nervous cases often arrange for admission to Porirua Mental Hospital as voluntary hoarders, thus enabling us to get them tinder timely treatment with a reasonable prospect of early recovery. In this way they may avoid complete breakdown, which, in many cases, would take place unless they had the present facilities and inducements for attending the clinic and advantage of consultation with doctors drawn from both services.” The clinic has been found equally useful in connection vitli Christchurch Hospital.

The report urges further provision before the New Year so as to safeguard persons alleged to he of unsound mind from the indignity, distress and the humiliation of being treated as delinquents or criminals and lodged in prison pending a decision as to their sanity or insanity. Further, in vase of committal to mental hospital, the ensuring of proper and humane .lodgment, care and treatment of the patient until taken charge of hv the mental hospital authorities. In order to facilitate provision and equipment of three or four rooms ill'each ol the four main centres, the Government voted last year £SOO for each of the general hospitals concerned, hut unfortunately no adequate hospital accommodation has yet been made available for use instead of police quarters, and so long as this utterly wrong last remaining link of the association connecting insanity and criminality remains, all

pleasures making for early recognition and prompt, suitable treatment of incipient insanity will fail to win complete public confidence, and will prove more or less ineffective. No effort will be soared to bring about the necessary provisions in this direction without further delay.

ENTRY LODGES AND SANATORIA. Sir Truby King slates that lodges tor preliminary examination awav from the main mental hospitals must he provided. Four attractive home-like cottages for this special purpose, one for each of the four main hospitals, have been authorised. Three arc under construction. All will be completed within the year. In addition to such residential cottages or small villas as may now exist on the mental hospital estates, it is intended to erect a simple, comfortable, home-like attractive small residence, with full provisions for privacy, and capable of accommodating not qiqro than a dpzeii patients each. These will he completed within the year, at a cost of £IB,OOO. Another reform is the separation of hoy and girl patients from adults, with adequate provision for care and education. This "ill be done at Nelson, where provision is to he made for 200 children. Thepe arc eighty to one hundred patients suffering from phthisis, for whom isolation shelters will he built, at a cost of £SOOO to £'600.0. Separate quarters are . needed for epileptic mental patients. THE CRIMINAL LUNATIC.

A separate institution for criminal lunatics has long been needed. The community, states Sir Truby Kina;, lias no i(l(*n that the so-called “criminal lunatic” is often not at all a violent or dangerous person if provided with suitable environment and the necessary care, occupation and treatment, and it rarely, if oyer, occurs to them that the patient may recover, as, for instance, in the case of a mother who kills her child owing to sepsis and puerperal fever or other temporary aberration caused by miscrobe poisoning. “Tho may serve to illustrate the poinT, though, of course, such a patient would not he sent to the type of institution under consideration. On tho other hand, every mental hospital has a small proportion of highly undesirable patients among its ordinary inmates, who are quite as-difficult to deal with as the more dangerous of the so-called criminal lunatic class. We feel very j strongly that an institution is needed \ for dealing with all refractory certified | criminal lunatics, also with any other specially difficult or refractory patients.”

As for the results of the year’s work, the report states, “all of us ape inclined to hope for the best when setting down and classifying the year’s figures, and the result is that the recovery rate may be given as of) per cent, of admissions where 2d per cent, or 30 per cent, aonld he nearer the mark if due account were taken of the probabilities of relapse and readniissjpn.”

A HALF-WAY HOUSE. REGISTER OF MENTAL DEFECTIVES. WELLINGTON, Aqg. 10. Tho presentation of the Mental Hospitals Report in the House of Representatives to-day prompted several members to raise again the question of the necessity for some institution, not of the mental hospital type, to which incipient cases of insanity should bo sent Mr Mason, member of Eden, spoke of tho Woolf Home, attached to the Auckland Mental Hospital, as a comfortably furnished institution of that kind which must give satisfaction to friends of the unfortunate patients. Mr Tapley (Dunedin North) suggested that it would he only humane if the Government provided special accommodation for the borderline cases. He had had letters recently from relatives of soldier patients suggesting, that these men were kept in a mental hospital when they hud r)0 right to be there, and he wished to know what • method was adopted of systematically checking the condition of patients with a view to their release if cured.

Mr Sidey reminded the Minister of tho recommendations of a committee which had reported fully on the treatment of sex perverts and mental defectives. He hoped that this report would not be overlooked, as was' sometimes tho case when recommendations did not suit a Government. The Minister in charge of mental hospitals, the Hon J. A. Young, replied that liis officers objected to the term half-way house but ho knew what members desired. lie wished the public to take a. different attitude towards the mentally diseased and to look upon the patients as having a chance of recovery and not to he ashamed if any of their relatives became troubled mentally. He was assured that if mental disease was taken at ail Carlv stage there was a good chance lor recovery, but, if there were no signs of improvement after the first six months there was a chance of the case becoming chronic. It was not an easy matter to parry out the recommendations of tlie committee on sex perverts and mental defectives, and there was a difference of opinion as-to how far the State should go in dealing with the feeble-minded. No doubt in due course legislation would he. introduced, and the first step would be to make a register of all mental defectives. This was as fur as they .could go for atari, and, having done that, they could consider whether public opinion was ripe for a measure of restraint. Members had mentioned tho right of appeal against retention in mental hospitals. He hoped next session to Fare legislation which would meet tho point.