MENTAL SIDE OF ILLNESS.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20624, 13 August 1932, Page 20

MENTAL SIDE OF ILLNESS.

ADVANCES IN MEDICAL EDUCATION.

PROBLEM OF THE FEEBLE-

MINDED

"Marked and increasing attention is being paid in medical education to the mental side of illness," declared Dr. Allon Peebles, an American medical economist, in an interview with The Pkess last night "Every physician should receive as part of his training an education in mental therapy. Too many complaints are treated in the stomach which really belong to the head. One reason for the growtli of Christian Science is undoubtedly the fact that it lias given its followers a help that they could not get from the private practitioner." The preventive side also would receive far more attention in medical education. Tn the past the point of view of mGdical education had always been the cure rather than the prevention of disease. There were, of course, obvious limits to prevention, but it was equally obvious that its full possibilities had not by any means been explored. The American people, said Dr. Peebles, were becoming more and more conscious of the need of preventive medicine and recognised that New Zealand had the finest baby system in the world. "Another of our chief problems is that of the mentally unfit, feebleminded people,'' he continued. "About one-half of all the hospital beds in the United States are occupied by such people as these, and the proportion is growing rapidly. Here is another great field for preventive medicine, where .training in psychiatry and neurology must have its effect, and another great field for preventive sterilisation. Several States in America have already passed sterilisation laws to prevent the propagation of the unfit.''