OUR MENTAL HOSPITALS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXII, Issue 8259, 27 December 1911, Page 2

OUR MENTAL HOSPITALS.

THEIR OVERCROWDED STATE.

URGENT CALL FOR ACTION

Per Press Association. ! AUCKLAND, December 26. ! Mr F. G. Ewingtoh, the official visitor to the Auckland Mental Hospital, reporting to the Government on the overcrowded state of the institution, says: — " I. wish, the Minister for the Department, with the representatives of thvJ Auckland daily Press, would accompany me over the- Mental Hospital any night at, say, twelve o'clock, and witness the scene of horrors consequent on the absolutely deplorable overcrowding. Even then they could not fully realise all, because overcrowding leads to practices positively unmentionable except m strict official and medical intercourse, so horribly degrading are they. Patients' beds are laid on the floor m passages against the attendants' bedroom doors, and the smell is repelling. The attendants have every night to Vit tables and chairs out of the readingroom to make up a good many shakedowns on the floor. Altogether there are about 56 shakedowns on the floors, m passages, and elsewhere. A current of cold air runs along the passages, and we might ask ourselves how we would like to be put to bed under such circumstances, or how we would like to know that while we enjoy a good bed at home, our wife, mother, or father is forced to lie on the floor,in a passage such as is the case m the Mental Hospital." Mr Ewington urgently and solemnly appeals to the Government to act promptly and adequately m this matter.