The Daily News. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1911. A BLOT ON NEW ZEALAND.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 96, 13 October 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1911. A BLOT ON NEW ZEALAND.

It is an appalling fact that New Zealand has too large a proportion of people who are mentally ill. It is to be assumed that medical science .lias advanced, and that a larger proportion of mental deficients are now given sanctuary in asylums than formerly. The increasing number of insane in New Zealand presents a most diifficult problem, and, it is hardly too much to say, a problem that there seems little prospect of solving. The chief difficulty is possibly the lack of obtaining reliable family history in a young country. There is. one matter in connection' with the mentally ill that should present no difficulty whatever to an enlightened and humane state —adequate sanctuary and treatment for tho unfortunate folk with darkened minds. Lately a mental patient was killed by a maniac in Porirua Mental Hospital. The room in which the tragedy happened was a day room used as a dormitory for eight persons, because the building was overcrowded. In this more or less enlightened country where political advertisers prate about humanity and the criminal and handle the habitual felon with kid gloves, giving him more air space, better food and better accommodation that he could possible get outside, the man with the most fell disease , of all, mental darkness, is huddled in such discomfort that the sane person shudders at the horror of it. The conditions that exist at Porirua are known to bo the conditions that exist at Avondale, and although repeated attention has been attracted to these conditions the State still commits the brutality of herding these poor folk together like cattle. Medical men have mentioned these conditions, but medical men who are servants of the State have not the necessary latitude of complaint and may be disposed to permit the condition of horror that is a black blot on the fame of New Zealand. The State knows of these conditions. It is being repeatedly reminded of them. It knows that preventive tragedies occur in asylums. Jt must be aware that existing conditions are a handicap to possible cure. The State does not withhold a huge post office from Auckland because it is hard up, nor does it cease work on the gigantic headquarters of the postal business in Wellington, for a like reason. The State does not assume its tall hat and boast about the prosperity of the country when it opens an asylum for the insane, and new post offices and palatial railway stations (which accommodate the same slow trains as heretofore) are good advertisements. The State has during the past year released some habitual criminals—cured ? A big proportion of these will come back again. But it hasn't released any habitual lunatics. There is no instance in New Zealand of a gaol being overcrowded. The criminal

is a hobby with some of our distinguished men. None of these distinguished men are raving about additional accommodation for the mental patients who are festering in asylums. The State is going to have an ornate and expensive new house to do tis business in. Politicians must not be short of accommodation. Let the lunatics suffer. It is notorious that despite faithful, energetic and enthusiastic medical work, proper classification of "cases" is impossible in the New Zealand asylums because of overcrowding and inconvenience. Everywhere in New Zealand there is a cry for better hospitals for the bodily afflicted, more complete specialisation iand more adequate means for coping with growing disease and the rage for surgery. . Tlie neglect of asylums for the mentally afflicted is one of the unsolved mysteries, presumably because increase of accommodation would not bring the kudos so dear to the hearts of the keepers of the public purse. Here is an evil worthy of the steel of the men who weep over n Tahi Kaka and ask for the release of a Terry, the best treated maniac in New Zealand.