Extension To Psychiatric Services In N.Z. Planned

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28253, 15 April 1957, Page 10

Extension To Psychiatric Services In N.Z. Planned

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, April 14. The Minister of Health (Mr J. R. Hanan) said today that the Government conceded that there was room for the extension of psychiatric services in New Zealand. “We are doing all we can to encourage the training of New Zealanders for this work,” he said.

The Minister was commenting on recent appeals for an improvement in psychiatric services for outpatients at New Zealand hospitals.

“The policy of my department is to make available from the mental hospital service experiienced medical officers who can attend at public hospitals to give outpatient treatment,” he said. Eut it would take some time before the mental hospitals would have enough staff to handle all the outpatient work. Psychiatrists in private practice who were available for part-time, work had been appointed on a part-time or “sessional” basis to the Mental Hygiene Division.

Mr Hanan said that steps were being taken to encourage young New Zealanders to join the mental hospital service. Better salaries and study leave on full pay so that promising medical officers could go overseas to get higher qualifications in psychiatry were being offered. “The medical staff of the Men-

tai Hygiene Division has outpatient clinics at Auckland, Waikato, Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson, Greymouth, Christchurch, Ashburton, Timaru. Oamaru, and Invercargill,” said Mr Hanan. At Dunedin, there was a department of psychiatry attached to the Otago Medical School which gave a consultative service to the Dunedin Hospital. Mr Hanan said that more people in New Zealand were becoming interested in psychiatry. With this improved appreciation of the scope of psychiatric work, more medical men would be available for it.