Family Life Best For Mentally Defective Child

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28371, 2 September 1957, Page 7

Family Life Best For Mentally Defective Child

(New Zealand Press Association)

DUNEDIN, Sept. 1. According to modern views on psychiatric treatment for the mentally deficient, children should not be placed in large impersonal institutions, but where it was impossible or unwise for them to remain in. their own homes, to provide a foster home or a replica of family life in cottageunit types of institutions. This was stated by Dr. H. Bourne, lecturer in psychiatry at the University of Otago Medical School, at the annual meeting of the New Zealand branch of the Australasian Association of Psychiatrists in Dunedin yesterday. The turnover of the mentally deficient in institutions in England and New Zealand was disproportionate, said Dr. Bourne, who studied at the Fountain Hospital in London, under Dr. L. T. Hilliard. After training, 75 per cent, of

the dullards at Fountain Hospital were discharged and found lasting employment. It had been found that even anents could be employed. Dullards are those at the •bottom end of the normal intelligence range, their low intelligence being complicated by emotional difficulties. The anent is the true mental defective, those who are deficient in intellect in the biological sense. The aim should be to provide a niche in the ordinary world for the dullard and to give the anent the maximum cultivation of his potential so that he might do meaningful work. Although an adult’s intelligence quotient could be roughly predicted in his infancy, it was not true to say, “on<ie a defective always a defective.” Large increases or decreases in a child’s I.Q. were possible, and occasionally the child might leave the mental defective category. Unfavourable Environment. An unfavourable social environment was one of the harmful factors which could depress a child’s 1.Q., said Dr. Bourne. Separating him from his parents and placing him in an institution might, therefore, warp a child’s intellectual development. The earlier this was done the greater was the risk and the less the justification, since the child’s I.Q. was less likely to be fixed.

“To 'herd the children into wards amounts to psychological malnutrition and institutions of that type are pointless,” he said The plan to concentrate several hundred beds for the mentally deficient at two or three centres was misconceived. For rehabilitation, give-and-take between the institution and the community was necessary.

“Institutions, which are isolated from the child’s community, because of geographical remoteness, are merely places of custody, and are more likely to create mental deficiency by stagnation than to serve their purpose of rehabilitation,” he said.

A co-ordinated mental deficiency service was needed in New Zealand and with a small and scattered population in this country, institutions should be small and scattered to link the institution and the community. This would provide family life, or a substitute for it, and give the child an intellectually-nutritive background.

Old houses could be purchased in each centre to provide these facilities and this would prove far more economical than the present set-up. The saving in cost could help, to provide special psychiatric and teaching services in the community and the institutions, said Dr. Bourne.