Mental Hospitals
Sir, —The chief obstacle to the abolition of mental hospitals proposed by Dr. Bourne is obviously the vested interest of the Health Department in a number of large and expensive buildings. An irrisistible idea occurs: why not hand them over to the Justice Department? Its desperate need for more accommodation has been made quite clear by Mr Barnett. As many of our mental hospitals are segregated from the community, they would be conveniently situated for borstal institutions. With rather more modification and a few additional locks, some would serve as prisons. Then the psychiatric medical and nursing staff, who continue valiantly to do their best in conditions which must at times be intolerably frustrating, would be free to do more satisfying work in smaller, com-munity-centre units of the type which have proved so successful elsewhere. The Health Department would naturally find it hard to part with its new villas, but if the mentally ill were to benefit from the transfer, why not have better buildings for borstals?— Yours, etc., WHY NOT? September 17, 1959.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29004, 18 September 1959, Page 3
Word Count
176Mental Hospitals Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29004, 18 September 1959, Page 3
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