STATE CLINICS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 880, 25 January 1930, Page 26

STATE CLINICS

TREATMENT FOR MENTAL ’ DEFECTIVES In a report on mental deficiency in j Australia, which has been presented j to the Prime Minister's Department,' Dr. W. Ernest Jones, Inspector-Gen-j eral of the Insane, Victoria, recoin-' mends the establishment of psycholo-; gical clinics in each State for the examination of mentally defective I children and young adults. The clinic, he suggests, should be attended by- a medical practitioner, experienced in diseases of children, an educationalist, w ith psychological | training, a medical practitioner with j experience in psychiatry, and a staff j of social workers. Dr. Jones con- 1 tends that the best way to make the I clinic efficient would be to attach it. to a children's court. Dr. Jones said the following im- \ portant social problems arose:—(l) j The detection and segregation ot the 1 mentally deficient persons, with ar- i rangements for their appropriate training and guardianship; (2) sterilisation of the unfit; (3) legislation on the marriage problem, by which only those individuals who are fit mentally and physically to enter into wedlock should be permitted to do so; (4) the elimination of syphilis from the community; (5) the prohibition of alcohol, or, at least, the enforcement of laws providing for its use rather than its abuse. Recommendations He recommends the establishment of residential schools, such as Glenfield (N.S.W., for high-grade mentally defective children who, on admission, should. not be more than 12 years of age or less than five. Special day schools, or opportunity classes in' State schools, such as- already- exist in Victoria and South Australia. Residential colonies for adults, who are capable of manual, industrial, or domestic training, in country districts, for the permanent segregaton of those causes unsuitable for guardia-nship outside an institution. A system of boarding-out, or guardianship, in conjunction with the residential colonies. Special blocks for hopeless idiots to be provided, as is the case in the State hospitals for the insane, failing the establishment of special institutions to accommodate all mental defectives. Referring to alcohol, Dr. Jones says: “The numbers admitted to inebriate institutions and the number of convictions for drunkenness are increasing year by year, and without going to the length of penalising the population as a whole, it appears desirable that chronic offenders in the matter ot inebriety should be dealt with much more strictly than appears to be the case at present, and that protracted residence in penal establishments, if necessary-, should be prescribed fov those in whose cases medical treatment has proved to be unavailing.” He contended that it was desirable greater effect should be given to the teaching of psychology and psychiatry in the various universities,

and particularly to the diploma ot ' psyfchological medicine, which had j been established by the University of i Sydney. He referred to the fact I that, although there were 60,000 invalid ' pensions in force in the Commonwealth, no exact knowledge existed as to what proportion of these pensions were given to mentally deficient persons. There was reason to believe that something like 10 per cent, of the pensions was given for that purpose; and there was practically- no method of inspection to determine whether the pension was being used to the best advantage. “It is characteristic of the mentally deficient,” remarks Dr. Jones, “that they are definitely retarded in their mastery of the forms of behaviour and control common to human beings. A child who by the age of 3£ years has not acquired clean habits, has not commenced to walk or to talk, can be suspected of mental defect. Any oue of these forms of behaviour may, however, be retarded by causes other than lack of intelligence, though very rarely beyond the age of four in cases where the physical organs and senses are normal. In the lowest grades of mental deficiency speech is never developed. In many cases of higher, but still quite marked defect the deficiency could never be detected from ordinary conversation; in some cases there may be a glibness which even gives an appearance of brightness. It should be noted that good and even remarkable powers of rote memory are not inconsistent with recognisable mental defect. On the whole, mental deficiency is accompanied by slightly less than average ability with the hands, but marked manual ability in work in which the demands are muscular rather than intellectual is at times found in cases of mental deficiency.”