MENTAL PATIENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 246, 18 October 1933, Page 5

MENTAL PATIENTS.

MANY DISCHARGES. "HEAVY RESPONSIBILITY." WORK OF DEPARTMENT. (r.y Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLIXGTOX, this day. Figures set out in the annual report to Parliament of the Mental Hospitals Department indicate that no effort is being spared by the authorities to restore patients to their relatives and friends if such a course is deemed prudent. During the last financial year 750 patients or boarders were discharged. This is a percentage of 54.3, calculated upon the number admitted. Of the number of discharges only 599, or 42.9 per cent, can be regarded as having recovered. "Our discharge rate is high," states the Director-General, Dr. T. G. Gray, "and this year our death rate is the lowest recorded for 24 years. Between these and the total admissions there is always a balance, more or less permanently added to our population, j Last year the average permanent accretion was 239; this year it is raised to •>.!'> »

Pointing out tlio heavy responsibility of discharging patients, Dr. Gray adds: '"On the one hand there is the urge to premature release 011 probation, because of the shortage of accommodation, supported by the not unnatural importunity of anxious relatives; and on the other hand there lies the duty of protecting- the safety of the community and the real interests of the pati'jnts concerned. In these circumstances, it is rather amazing that untoward incidents have been so few and far between in the whole history of the Department. "Discharge, probation, and parole are all attended with some degree of risk, but the advantages of granting as much freedom as possible to patients are so manifest that any curtailment of the present policy is untenable."

At the close of the year there were 7194 persons on the registers, the admissions for the vear showing a decrease of 10.