‘Mentalink’ plan well received

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32634, 16 June 1971, Page 11

‘Mentalink’ plan well received

(New Zealand Prate Association)

AUCKLAND, June 14.

Members of the public are responding enthusiastically to a campaign, launched in Auckland this week, which encourages people to correspond with patients in psychiatric hospitals.

The initiator of the scheme—which has been christened “Mentalink”—is Miss J. Redder, a psychologist doing research in the department of psychiatry at Auckland Hospital. On the first day of the campaign today she received dozens of calls from people interested in making contact with a mental patient Miss Redder has approached a number of schools, church oragnisations and welfare groups to gain support for the idea. "In most cases, it will be a one-way correspondence, as few of the patients will be able to write back,” she said.

‘l’m hoping, however, that people won’t restrict themselves to writing letters but will send postcards, pictures and magazines to the patients —anything to brighten their world.”

During a. period of research work at Kingseat Hospital, Miss Redder said,

she was horrified to discover that more than half the patients had no contact with anyone outside the hospital. "It was one of the saddest things imaginable to see how drab and grey their lives were. The longer they stayed in hospital, the more they were forgotten.” Even a coloured picture to put on the blank walls in psychiatric wards would do patients the world of good, she said.