Mental Hospital Control

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30823, 7 August 1965, Page 14

Mental Hospital Control

Sir, —It will be tragic if the care of the mentally ill becomes a trade union football. Could Mr Cox tell me where a nurse can exercise her “basic democratic right” to train as a psychiatric nurse outside the employ of the Public Service? Apart from three or four university positions, psychiatrists seeking full-time employment have only two hospital board posts and no vacancies available. The placing of mental hospitals under the control of boards of local citizens in 1960 was a major step in raising the standard of care for the mentally ill in the United Kingdom. Mr Cox’s long statement on behalf of the Public Service Association does not mention the patients For whom are hospitals run? —Yours, etc., JOHN DOBSON.

August 2, 1965. [The chairman of the central committee of the mental health group of the Public Service Association (Mr A. J. Cox) replies: “Dr. Dobson confuses the right to choose an occupation with the right to choose an employer. Anyone electing to train as a psychiatric nurse in New Zealand should be well aware that such training is available only within the Public Service. Mental hospitals in England came under the control of the National Health Service on April 1, 1948. In his book, ‘Your Guide to the National Health Service,’ A David Le Vay, M.S.. F.R.C.S., had this to say: ‘The only rapid and practical way to deal with our higgledy-piggledy agglomeration of hospitals is for the Government to take them all over, voluntary and municipal, lock, stock and barrel.” (Page 17.) As regards the care of patients, from the same book (page 72), the then Minister of Health (England. 1946) had this to say: ‘Now that we are reaching the conclusion, let me hope that the echoes of controversy will die down, and that what will reach our ears will not be the declamations of partisans but the whispers and the piteous appeals of sick people all over the country, of the weak and distressed who are reaching out their hands to this House of Commons to give them succour and assistance in their difficulties. I believe that eventually it will be that smalt voice that will be heard, and that will be most influential, and not the raucous declamations of controversialist!!."’]