DOCTORS FOR MENTAL HOSPITALS

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24820, 9 March 1946, Page 6

DOCTORS FOR MENTAL HOSPITALS

COMMENTS ON ADVANCES IN TREATMENT

(P.A.) AUCKLAND, March 8. Engaged to fill vacancies in the Mental Hospitals Department, five British doctors, Dr. J. E. Saville, Dr. W. M. Reid, Dr. H. D. Lamb, Dr. W. F. Latham, and Dr. J. F. Stenhouse, accompanied by their wives and children, arrived on the Akaroa.

All have had considerable experience in psychiatry and in administrative work in mental hospitals, and possess knowledge gained from large scale treatment during the war. Dr. Saville, who will be stationed in Christchurch, was recently assistant to Dr. Grierson, leading Home Office psychiatrist, and has completed eight years’ work in prisons studying the mental condition of criminals. Dr. Reid, formerly Deputy-Medical Superintendent pf the Kingseat Mental Hospital, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, will be employed at the Porirua Hospital. During the war he did work for the Navy, and had occasion to use the most recently-developed • forms of insulin and shock treatment. “There have been many advances made in the treatment of war neurosis.” said Dr. Lamb, who until recently was a surgeon-commander in the Naval Medical Service. “There were an enormous number of cases in which patients were restored to full service duties, and hot as formerly to noncombatant duty. Providing naval personnel suffering from neuroses were of good stamina, it was possible to achieve great success/’ The treatment of neuroses consisted of continuous Sleep induced for 72 hours by a mixture of drugs, he said, but each case was considered on its own merits. Now the war was over this sleep treatment would not be widely used, but it was excellent in curing mental cases in which the brain was highly excited. Dr. Lamb will be stationed in Auckland, and Dr. Latham, who is from Edinburgh, in Nelson. There had been a large drop in the number of cases admitted to mental hospitals during the war, stated Dr. Stenhouse, an associate of Dr. A. W. Petrie, the well-knoWn British psychiatry expert. Dr. Stenhouse, who Until recently was employed by the London City Council in its mental hospitals, will take up a position at Tokahui. He attributed the fewer mental cases to the fact that people had had useful and necessary work to do. and had had less time to think of themselves.

The doctors, who all had to wait for a considerable period to get a passage to New Zealand, emphasised that they were to fill vacancies and would not necessarily add to the medical mental knowledge possessed in the Dominion. Their three-year appointments are the result of newspaper advertisements in Great Britain. .