The Press FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1959. Mental Deficiency Services

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28895, 15 May 1959, Page 10

The Press FRIDAY, MAY 15, 1959. Mental Deficiency Services

Because of the size and complexity of the problem, the increased public interest in mental health in recent years is welcome. The Government, therefore, is to be commended for inviting to New Zealand so distinguished an authority as Dr. L. T. Hilliard, physician superintendent of the Fountain Hospital, London. Dr. Hilliard has attained eminence as a specialist on mental deficiency, a topic which earlier this year received anxious attention in New Zealand as the result of a report by a special committee of the British Medical Association. This report estimated New Zealand’s mentally defective population at nearly 57.000; and it condemned as inadequate and outmoded the present policy on the care of such persons. Dr. Hilliard, who is internationally known as a consultant for the World Health Organisation, was one of the authorities most frequently cited in the B.M.A. report, which made sweeping recommendations for overhauling the Dominion’s mental deficiency services and for

introducing new methods proved successful overseas.

The report was received with rib obvious enthusiasm by the Minister of Health (Mr Mason); but the invitation to Dr. Hilliard is evidence that neither the Government nor the Health Department is as complacent about the state of the country’s mental deficiency services as sometimes appears. The evidence would be more convincing if the Government had arranged for Dr. Hilliard to make the same kind of thorough-going survey of institutions and services that he has undertaken for the Australian Government. When all due allowance is made for the circumstances outlined (in a statement printed today) by Mr Nordmeyer, as acting Minister of Health, it will surely be a very incomplete picture of New Zealand’s mental health services that Dr. Hilliard will form if he has no opportunity to study the working of such major—and representative—units in the system as the Porirua, Sunnyside, and Seacliff Mental Hospitals.