MENTAL PATIENTS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 113, 5 January 1932, Page 7

MENTAL PATIENTS

DIRECTOR'S VIEWS DANGEROUS CASES REQUIRE THEIR OWN SEPARATE INSTITUTION. DANGER UP ESCAPE. Dangerous patients in mental hospitals constitute a special problem, espeeially in view of the overcrowding in yarious institutions at the present time. For this reason, it is i strongly urged by the Director-Gene-ral of Mental Hospitals, Dr. T. G. Gray, in his annual report, that a separate institution should be erected for these patients to serve the whole Dominion. * "With the gradual extension of parole and the 'open door' system in our mental hospitals, it is becoming increasingly desirable that a separate institution to serve the .needs of the whole Dominion should ibe erected for the safe custody of dangerbus patients," says Dr. Gray. "By 'dangeri ous patients,' I do not neeessarily rej fer to the so-called criminal lunatic,' | and I do not suggest the establish- ! ment of an institution like Broadmoor, j in England, to which those acquitted I of serious crime on aecount of insanity j would be automatically committed. | "The great majority of those com- ! i mitted to our eare under the part of I I the Act dealing with criminals are ! ! not violent or dangerous patients if I provided with proper occupation, enI vironment, and treatment, and, in- | ! s*tead of causing any trouble or an- ; xiety in our institutions, they are not : infrequently among the most amen- ; able and industrious of our patients. On the other hand, in every institution there is a small proportion of patients whose hallueinations, persecutory ideas, sexual, fire-raising, or other abnormal proclivities render them a sonrce of great danger to their fellow-inmates, and to the staff while in the institution, and to the community if they happen to escape "The results of their detention in an ordinary mental hospital are douhly unfortunate. In the first place, they render necessary structural precautions and restrictions which would otherwise be dispensed with to the benefit and increased liberty of the other patients, and, secondly, they have themselves to be guarded and restrained with a strictness which could be mitigated in an institution specially deSigned for the needs of this small group. The number for whom this purely custodial care requires to be provided is not large — certainly not more than 100 — but their segregation in this way wonld be of manifest advantage to the ordinary run of patients in our mental hospitals."