MENTAL HEALTH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 334, 16 November 1945, Page 5

MENTAL HEALTH

Sir-I much appreciate your long teview of the Lighthouse Series of pamphlets in your issue of 19th October. It shows clearly that The Listener fully appreciates the importance of mental health. "Galen" (your reviewer) makes some criticisms and comments which will be duly noted. He goes on, however, to make some assertions regarding psychological theory. It is not, however, on his statements of theory that I should like to comment, but on his view that psychological treatment should be in the hands of medical practitioners, and that patients should be "protected" from lay psychotherapists. Now it is very desirable that there should be qualified medical practitioners capable of treating cases of war neurosis and civilian psycho-neuroses, but "Galen" must explain how this is to be achieved. The number of doctors in New Zealand so qualified is vanishingly small, and there is no immediate prospect of any increase. There is no such training available at-Otago Medical School. It can be demonstrated that most qualified doctors at the present time are less capable of treating these disorders than a number of educated laymen. Assuming that there are 50,000 persons in New Zealand needing psychotherapy-a conservative estimate-and that one doctor can manage only 12 patients (an outside limit) at any one time, and realising that the period of treatment may vary from six weeks to a year,-a small calculation will reveal how many doctors will be needed. Where are they to come from? The constant cry of these patients is that they have been the rounds of many doctors, often in more than one town, and have come away empty. It has been estimated by competent authorities that in 30 per cent. of all cases of illness of all types (medical, surgical, etc.) the appropriate treatment is psychotherapy, because the illness is psychogenic in causation, In conjunction with others who have studied this problem for a considerable time, I contend that the only solutio: in the immediate future and for many years to come is the training and employment of lay psychotherapists. This has been urged by Dr. E. Beaglehole, of Wellington. ‘They’ could advantageously work under the supervision of a qualified medical psychologist where such is available. Where, not available, they could work in conjunction with a cooperative medical practitioner who would be responsible for the detection of organic disease. ' Apart from some such scheme the future for many sufferers in New Zealand is dark indeed, and Social Security funds will continue to be wasted on such dope as valerian and bromides.

FRANK

COOK

(Upper Riccarton).