MENTALLY INFIRM

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 210, 24 November 1927, Page 15

MENTALLY INFIRM

CARE OF THE AGED HOSPITAL BOARD’S PROBLEM (Special to THE SUN.) CHRISTCHURCH, Wednesday. The question of the committal of aged people to mental hospitals came before the North Canterbury Hospital Board to-day in a report by Dr. Gray, Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals, forwarded by Dr. T, H. A. Valintine, Director-General of Health. “Nobody can deny,” Dr. Gray states, “that many aged people become irritable, restless, degraded in habits and irresponsible and difficult to such a degree that they require care in a mental hospital. It would be unfair to ask hospital boards to treat such, cases in hospitals, or in old people’s homes. On the other hand, for many years past, many old people who are merely suffering from physiological or normal senile decay have been committed to mental hospitals simply because they are no longer able to look after themselves. These people are not of unsound mind. Their mental decay is exactly what must inevitably happen to each of us if we live to a great age.

“As these people are not of unsound mind and as no other agency would undertake' their care, we embodied in a clause in the Mental Defectives Act a class (‘mentally infirm’), meaning mental infirmity arising from age or the decay of their faculties rendering them incapable of managing themselves or their affairs. “This practically legalised what had long been a wrong practice, namely, the reception of old people into mental hospitals.” Dr. Gray said that he would be very glad if members of the North Canterbury Board arranged with Dr. A. C. McKillop at the Sunnyside Mental Hospital to interview some cases under discussion in order that the members should satisfy themselves as to the facts. The report was referred to file Benevolent Committee.