Mental Hospitals

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28491, 22 January 1958, Page 3

Mental Hospitals

Sir, —M. Holcroft writes of New Zealand: “I have found, in years of journalism, that there is seldom more than a languid interest in the darker places of our social system. ... If there is a statement about conditions in mental asylums, about prison reform . . . you can almost feel the public turning stiffly away to think of more pleasant things.” It is to be hoped this will not be the reaction of Dr. Sanford Myers’s remarks on New Zealand mental hospitals. His statements about backwardness of treatment and very low ratios of trained staff to patients certainly call for full investigation and government action. Many in New Zealand still think of treating mental patients as consisting ipainly of building walls high enough so they can’t escape, and it is about time we emerged from such medieval apathy and ignorance and began to think and act with a little more evidence of civilisation.—Yours, etc., M. D. SADLER. January 20, 1958. Sir, —Dr. Sanford H. Meyers, a visiting United States psychiatrist, throws a searchlight on the “hardly re-assuring’ ’ treatment and methods used in our mental hospitals, says shock treatment is “overdone” in New Zealand, and praises Dr. Bevan Brown’s clinic, “the only clinic he has seen in New Zealand where modern trends in treatment were being used.” With all the goodwill in the world, three doctors in charge of 1500 patients at Sunnyside cannot attempt adequate psychotheraputic treatment. Mental illness in many insances is a deepseated personality disorder and it is only by the re-establishment of inter-personal relationships that the sick person can be restored to health. Treatments are being used in New Zealand in cases where such treatment has been abandoned overseas, and tranquilising drugs are used here without the accompanying intensive psychotherapy used overseas. “We, the people,” should press for a Royal Commission into mental hospitals and the treatment and prevention of mental illness. It should comprise men of the calibre* of Dr. Bevan Brown, overseas psychiatrists from enlightened hospitals, and lay people.—Yours, etc., DOUGLAS C. McKECHNIE.

Geraldine, January 20, 1958.