Psychiatric Clinics

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28619, 23 June 1958, Page 3

Psychiatric Clinics

Sir, —An outpatients’ psychiatric clinic would save the Government thousands as many patients only require a few shock treatments and or tranquillisers. Putting people in a mental hospital should be a last resort, because patients affect one another in such close association. Being committed has a devastating effect on patients who soon realise they cannot get free, like the voluntary patient. Why is our voluntarv age 21 while in England it is 17? —Yours, etc.. FIFTY YEARS BEHIND THE TIMES. June 10, 1958. [The director of the Mental Hygiene Division, Dr. R. G. T. Lewis, said: “I agree that a great deal can be done for certain types of psychiatric illness by way of outpatient treatment. The aim is to treat as many patients as possible out of hospital and in the way as is done in general hospitals. There is scope for the extension of psychiatric outpatient services and this aspect is the subject of investigation by a committee of the Board" of Health, set up by the Minister of Health (Mr Mason). Steps have been taken already by the Mental Hygiene Division to have the statute altered so that the lower age limit for accepting voluntary boarders is brought down from 21 years to 16 years. I am sure that it would be a retrograde step to adopt the principle suggested by your correspondent of using mental hospitals as a last resort for treatment. The policy is to make them places of active treatment for early cases as well as for the more serious ones.’’]