MENTAL PATIENTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 282, 29 November 1938, Page 12

MENTAL PATIENTS.

PROBLEM FOR INFIRMARY.

CO.NSFDKRATIOX FOR OTHERS.

A statement by the Director-General of Ment.il tffwplal*, Dr. T. G. Gray, that none of rertain eases transfened from the Auckland Infirmary to the Auckland -Mental Hospital could b« described as troublesome or danjjerous was the subject of i-oiiinipiit by Dr. E. L. Fitzgerald, medical siifwiintciident of the Infirmary, in a report to the Auckland Hospital Hoard la**t evening.

Dr. Fitzgerald said that the Director(Jenernl and his medical officers were entirely unacquainted wilh the facilities of the institution. They had never visited it, ami were not in a position to express an opinion as to what were suitable cases. The Infirmary was primarily a home for aged an<T infirm people, who had come to spend their declining years in peace and quiet. Rightly, in his opinion, they objected to being placed in warde with noisy mental defectives.

Continuing, Dr. Fitzgerald «iid that he had positive records of patients transferred to the Mental Hospital having disturbed a whole ward by ehouting or by pulling other patients out of bed, and, in one particular case, of assaulting the nurses and throwing flower vases and other objects at them. Even if they did settle down in an infirmary ward of the Mental Hospital it was only a greater justification of their being sent to a place where they received expert mental nursing, which the hospital infirmary did not possess.

On the recommendation of the infirmary committee the board decided to forward a further reply to the DirectorGeneral, again stressing the care the board . exercised in the admission of senile persons to the Mental Hospital.