Emotionally Disturbed Children

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31378, 25 May 1967, Page 12

Emotionally Disturbed Children

Sir,—The address by Dr. Lewis was well worth hearing, but he held out little hope for the future, apparently supporting the defeatist attitude of the Health Department and the medical profession generally. There should be no need, though, for the emergency training scheme suggested by "Helper,” for resources already available are being wasted. Since I was driven out of Templeton Hospital four years ago, at least three psychologists who followed me have also moved on. Doctors, with negligible psychological training, are neither qualified nor willing to help emotionally disturbed children, but do not want anyone else to do the job, either. Dr. Lewis praised facilities in Melbourne, but did not mention that the children's clinics there are serviced by psychologists. Fifty people are teaching psychology in New Zealand universities, but the end product, in clinical terms, is stifled or destroyed.—Yours, ” VARIAN J. WILSON. May 24, 1967.

Sir, —Would it not be possible to require that any woman applying for a marriage licence must present a certificate that she had attended a course of instruction in child care and child psychology? We allow girls to enter the most important profession of all without the most elementary training. The course could include inspection of selected homes to show happy, healthy children in model environments, and photographs and records of disturbed children. It should emphasise the effect of alcohol, quarrelling, unclean homes, and immoral parents on young children and this truth instilled: children learn by example. Whenever I read of some particularly appalling case in the Children’s Court, I think: “Yet for that child, too, some woman must have once sewn baby clothes, and dreamed dreams. She just didn’t know enough.”—Yours, PARENT. May 24, 1967.