CARE OF MENTAL DEFICIENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 205, 30 August 1926, Page 6

CARE OF MENTAL DEFICIENTS.

Mental deficiency is becoming a more difficult problem every year, according to statistical returns, which reveal an alarming growth in the number of caees. The. problem of training tho feebleminded is engaging the minds of alienists the world over, and in order that the latest information upon the eubject may be made available, the Government has decided to send Dr. Gray. Deputy General Inspector of Mental Hospitals, to Europe to make investigations before legislation ie framed to deal with such cases.

This step is really an essential one, and we hope that the report will meet with more consideration than that of

the committee of inquiry which collected much valuable evidence and made remedial suggestions two years ago. Absolutely nothing was done with that report, which apparently was pigeonholed, in the archives of the Health Department. Since that report was presented a good deal of progress has been made abroad, and it is as well that the methods which have proved successful elsewhere should be incorporated into our system.

■The present method of dealing with mental defectives in this Dominion is inept and damaging to the patients themselves, and delay in reforming the methods of treatment casts a heavy and increasing burden on the community. At only one school in the whole Dominion is any attempt made to improve the mental outlook of deficient children; for those of maturer years nothing of a curative nature is attempted. To send such casee out to the ordinary mental hospital, even if they be kept segregated from the hopelessly insane, is to invite disaster, and it is essential that some entirely separate institution, in the nature of a half-way house, should be established, where deficients and degenerates might be taught come occupation suited to their limitations, and made of some use to themselves and to society at large.

Dr. Gray is particularly well equipped to conduct the proposed inquiry; he knows the present system from years of association with it. He is kindly and sympathetic, and he has been a very successful administrator of our institutions. It is to be hoped that when his report is received the Government will waste no further time, but will take definite action on medern lines to equip the unfortunates "with ac liberal a mental endowment as is possible.