Dean Rates Alcoholism Third Worst Disease

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30575, 19 October 1964, Page 7

Dean Rates Alcoholism Third Worst Disease

Alcoholics should find kind counselling rather than brutal judgment in the Church today when they called on the parson for help, said the Dean of Christchurch (the Very Rev. W. A. Pyatt).

“We clergy have stopped trying to play God as far as our counselling methods are concerned,” he said. “We try to help the alcoholic stand on his own feet.”

Dean Pyatt was giving the second in a series of Workers’ Educational Association addresses on alcoholism.

Alcoholism, he said, led to insanity and early death. It

was the third worst disease after mental diseases and heart ailments; When dealing with an alcoholic there was no good in playing God and telling him what to do with his life. The alcoholic’s ailment could be discussed with him, he said, as one would discuss someone else’s broken leg or the necessity for an appendix operation. Home And Church The alcoholic needed psychological help to learn how to lean on himself rather than on drink. Doctors, the Church, wives, and hospitals, he said, could all help the alcoholic. The home and Church could help, and must. “Alcoholics can get help from the Church,” said Dean Pyatt. “Most clergy are trained now in the non-direct technique of helping alcoholics,” he said. “Most are trained to recognise the alcoholic. Most are trained to recognise the various kinds of neurosis. “Sometimes I look at some of our Christians and think that perhaps they are not creating the kind of warm conditions an alcoholic should find if he goes into a church,” said Dean Pyatt. “But largely Christians have responded to this.”

The Church, said Dean Pyatt, helped far more than was realised. People were coming to the clergy for help far more today then, say, 18 months ago. “Primarily, as far as the Church is concerned, God is the one who can do the most to help the alcoholics,” said Dean Pyatt.

A wife, if she wanted to help her alcoholic husband, could do so by getting him to realise he was sick; getting him to accept help; and getting him to realise that his wife would be with him all the way.