THE FEEBLE-MINDED.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 February 1921, Page 9

THE FEEBLE-MINDED.

THEIR CARE AND TRAINING. NEW TASMANIAN LAW. The care and treatment of the feebleminded in the United States is a subject to be investigated by Dr. E. Morris Miller, Professor of Psychology in the University of Tasmania, who arrived in Auckland recently by the Tofua, and is about to proceed to San Francisco from Wellington. The object of his intended investigations is to assist him in framing the regulations, and in setting up the administrative machinery, under the Mental Deficiency Act passed last session by the Tasmanian Parliament. He will inquire into the administration and methods of the institutions and colonies for the care and treatment of the feeble-minded, as well as the special schools and classes under the American departments of education.

The Tasmanian Act, said Dr. Miller, was mainly framed by himself. It was chiefly based upon the British Act of 1913, but several advances were made, the most important being the provisions relating to the State psychological clinic for the purposes of diagnosis. The New Zealand Act was drawn upon in some respects, especially the part concerning the administration of the estates of defectives.

The guiding idea of the Act was that every defective child capable of any training at all should he trained as far as his mental endowment would permit, and in conformity with his special abilities and special disabilities. To find these out was the problem of corrective pedagogics—an application of the psychological principles of mental development, both normal and abnormal, of the young from infancy to adolescence. TASMANIAN GOVERNMENT’S PROGRAMME. The programme which the Government of Tasmania had set out to achieve c'omprised the mental survey of all defective children in all schools and institutions in the State, both public and private; the registration of all those children; the establishment of special schools and* classes for their training and observation; and the establishment of a colony for such as required institutional care. The diagnosis would be made either by two medical practitioners or one medical practitioner in conjunction with an examining phychologist. The examinations would be chiefly conduced through the psychologi >al clinic and comprise an investigation into the bodily mental and social condition of the defective as well as into his personal, family, and school history. The methods of caring for the defectives as proposed in Tasmania, Dr. Miller stated, were chiefly three:—Spccal school assistance for the higher grades; social assistance or supervision for those able to carry on outside institutions under the guidance of after-care committees; and social segregation in institutions for those who cannot be cared for in any other way. The whole administration of the Act was under the control of a Mental Deficiency Board, comprising the Director of Public Health., as chairman, a medical practitioner with knowledge of psychiatry, the director of the psychological clinic, and two others, one representing the Education Department.

Dr. Miller added that in a large State the university and the Education Department -would set up their own clinics, but that was inadvisable in a small State, hence their connection in Tas* mania with the Mental Deficiency Board. Provision was made in the Act that any children or adult xm trial for offences might be examined through the clinic if suspected ofybeing mentally defective. NEW ZEALAND AQT REVIEWED. With reference to the New Zealand Act, Dr Miller said it was unfortunate that the term mental deficiency was used in the Dominion to cover cases of uns’oundne.js of mind (lunacy) and mental disorders, as well as amentia or arrestment .of mental development. Scientific opinion to-day was hgainst Ifi’inging lunacy and feeble-mindedness under one generic term. Apart from that the New Zealand Act was a most useful measure, and he hoped it would on be extended to cover the new provisions set forth in the Tasmanian Act.

The University of New Zealand could, with advantage, be linked up wi..i the administration of the Mental Deficiency Act on the psychological and pedagogical side as well as on the neuro-pathological and the psycho-pathological. That was being done in other countries. The Sydney University and the Teachers’ College were preparing for a similar extension of their functions in anticipation of Parliament passing a measure in the near future.

Indeed, the tendency to-day, concluded Dr. Miller, was to separate psychology •from philosophy, and make it an independent department of the university. Where this was not possible it was desirable that the distinction should be recognised in the teaching of the subject in the University. Sydney had already done it. Hobart was following suit. Beore long the practice would be general in the Commonwealth.