PSYCHOLOGY AND CRIME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1939, Page 11

PSYCHOLOGY AND CRIME

The quickening of public interest in questions of mental health during the last 10 years was emphasised by Mr Robert Bernays, M.P., Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Health in Great Britain, when he attended a recent luncheon in connection with the fifth biennial conference on mental health of the National Council for Mental Hygiene. Mr Bernays says that the Government’s Criminal Justice Bill proposed to extend the powers of the Courts to remand, and made further elaboration in the probation procedure. The objective of the Government was, to gbt a real and thorough diagnosis of any offender who might be said to be suffering from some mental abnormality. If mental abnormality was diagnosed and was susceptible to treatment the offender would get treatment. not prison. This was a hew and difficult field in which their would be great opportunities for all engaged in our mental health service to co-oper-ate. One mental problem requiring particular attention by the council was what the layman called melancholia. One of the tragedies of this disease was that it so often attacked people of the finest intellect and very finest character. Apart from the sadness of the disease, there was a tremendous human wastage in the continuance of it. Every form of social welfare had made giant strides since the war, but few more so than the treatment of mental illness.