MENTAL PATIENTS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4596, 3 September 1923, Page 3

MENTAL PATIENTS.

ADMISSION TO AN ASYLUM!. . WHAT HAPPENS' TO AN INMATE. Some facts as to what is done on the admission of a mental patient to tjie niental hospital were related to .the Red Cross Society by Dr. Gray, l”of the Nelson institution. He stated : “Practically every patient who enters a mental hospital requires some treatment for some physical ailment. Many, acute attacks of insanity are largely due to gastro-intestinal intoxication. Others- are again due to the stresses associated with certain critical periods of life, while other attacks follow upon childbirth, influenza, and injury. These facts have led to what we call the hospitalisation of the asylums. . . You can understand ' the fear with which a man would be afflicted on bis admission to the institution. He would have all the false ideas which the general public cherish in regard to these places. He would expect to be seized by the keepers, put in rough clothes, thrown into a cell,, or tied up in a straight-jacket. He would become ac the patients did in the old Bedlam. . What does happen? He is weighed ■Land exmined by the assistant physician and has a warm bath. He then enters a ward, which in no respect diffeip from that in a general hospi-tal-charts above his head, a locker by the bedside for his personal use. He is nursed, not restrained—mark you, nursed by female nurses. As patients of old reacted to their surroundings, so does this man. He is in a hospital ward,, and is thus assured that he is a sick man who is to .be nursed to health—not a lunatic who requires restraint. By this initial step half the battle is won. When we look upon the progress we have made since 1857 we may be pardoned for taking some pride in our ments. It is a far cry from the chains and manacles of 1857 tp the hospital wards and nurses of 1923, but Jfeistory teaches us not to be content, liut to go on experimenting.”