MENTAL HOSPITALS REPORT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22464, 27 July 1938, Page 17

MENTAL HOSPITALS REPORT

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHEfiS Sir,—l have read many of your correspondence concerning our mental hospitals. I have had much experience with the Public Trust Office. This being so, I have gained enough knowledge to confirm the statements made by Mrs Coleridge Farr and others in your paper, A day or two after a patient enters the mental hospital the Public Trust Office takes possession of his estate. Does this not bind the patient, making it difficult to get his discharge? You will see that during the year 875 were discharged, but not more than 502 could be regarded as recovered. If the public can read between the lines of Mrs Farr’s letter they will find this explains the position.—Yours, etc., ALF WILKINS. July 26, 1933.

TO THE -EDITOR OF THE TRESS.

Sir, —In the mental hospitals annual report for the year 1937, mention is made of the fact that at Sunnysidc part of the farm land was utilised for the growing of cereal crops, some of which were made more of for purposes other than local requirements. It is suggested that, as ample land is available at Sunny side, together with an abundance of free labour, far more attention should be given to the urgent need of producing a more liberal allowance of uncooked vegetable food in the shape of celery, lettuce, etc., which would greatly assist towards an improved health of the whole community. It is argued—and with every justification in the interests of the patients—that the present diet consists of far too much of arteryhardening and starchy stuffs and toxinbearing poorest quality meat. It is calculated by one who is capable of making a fair computation that the proportion of this unsuitable diet is as high as 80 per cent, of the total food generally supplied. There is also a sad shortage of fruit. This class of food, of course, would be hard enough indeed to be negotiated even by those blessed with the strongest of digestive systems. The result of such longcontinued dieting upon those who are in poor health (and these would undoubtedly include the great majority of all mental hospital patients) is a matter of conclusion well within the grasp of a child’s understanding. It is also a matter of plain common sense. No university degree whatever is necessary to that end. What with the present class of diet and other general treatment so common to all the mental hospitals of the Dominion, the conditions are such that, under them, sooner cr later, the strongest minds would warp and the healthiest bodies would degenerate.—Yours, etc.. E. H. C. BIDDER. ILalswell, July 26, 1038.

10 THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS,

Sir, —Increasing public interest in the care extended to New Zealand citizens suffering from nervous illnesses is being reflected in a change of atmosphere of the annual reports of our Mental Hospitals Department. Occupation therapy is beginning to be recognised, and is now being conducted among a small percentage of the patients by. 11 instructors, some of them voluntary workers; and the Director-General of Mental Hospitals voices the hope that “the day is not far distant when every patient will have some form of occupation, however elementary its nature.” The. realisation of this hope is at variance with the present deplorable overcrowding and understaffing of our asylums, now in a scandalous stage. On the subject of occupation therapy, experienced medical men have repeatedly pointed out the difference that exists between the employment of willing and convalescent patients in ward work, in kitchen, farm, garden. laundry, etc., on the one hand; and occupation therapy in its true sense, on the other. The latter implies the co-operation of the staff as a whole for the benefit of the individual patient, rather than the placing of the patient in the most useful form of occupation in the interests of domestic and gardening economy. The distinction is not vet acknowledged in New Zealand. Further overseas specialists have already included physical education as an inherent branch of occupation therapy. In fact, British asylums have already placed 75 per cent, of their inmates in a position to bring about the recreation of their own sanity by means of occupation therapy, including physical education. Contrast this promising position with the statement of our own Director-General of Mental Hospitals; “Our farms and gardens are much more extensive than those attached to British hospitals, and our patients engage in larger numbers in outside work; but there are still many patients whose mental or physical state renders such occupations impossible or undesirable, and for these the classes (occupation therapy) provide a valuable outlet for their energies.”

In effect, occupation therapy is understood by our mental hospital authorities to mean farming, gardening, kitchen, ward and laundry work cn the part of patients able to engage therein. Further proof of this mistaken attitude is furnished by the fact that nearly £20,000 was received during 1937 from sales of farm produce, in spite of the fact that medical advice is to the effect that the mental hospitals dietary is deficient in "bloodevolving and nerve-nourishing fruit, vegetables, salads, wholemeal bread, milk, legumes, nuts, etc.” ‘

The official attitude towards diet, occupation therapy, etc., will best be reformed by the merging of the mental hospitals department into an enlarged and modernised National Health Department, to the end that the rational measures shortly to be adopted for the prevention, amelioration and cure of all disease may be automatically extended to cases of nervous illness, now numbering onethird of the total sufferers from illhealth of any kind, and in New Zealand having reached the ratio of one mentally afflicted person out of every 75 of the population.—Yours, etc..

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL WELFARE SOCIETY OF NEW ZEALAND tine,). Auckland, July 22, 1938. [Subject to the right of reply of E. M LovelLSmith this correspondence is now closed. —Ed.. "The Press."!