SUICIDAL TENDENCY IN THE INSANE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3201, 1 October 1881, Page 3

SUICIDAL TENDENCY IN THE INSANE.

A great source of anxiety to an asylum physician is the suicidal tendency of many of his patients, to frustrate attempts at which never-ceasing vigilance is necessary. At times, however, the ingenuity and determination which the insane, and notably the melancholic and depressed, will display in carrying out their sad aims, evade all ■watchfulness. A few instances of this may be of interest. A butcher, middle-aged, was brought under asylum care, suffering from melancholia, the assigned cause being intemperance and hereditary predisposition. • On the morning of the 9th of April, shortly before nine a.m. —and it may be here noted that the majority of suicides occur in the morning—he had finished, breakfast, and there was no apparent ohawgjs in his mental state, he having joked with the attendant in charge of the ward, and employed himself in dusting, as he was in the habit of doing. Hβ then went into a little four-bedded room Opening off the ward, carrying his duster with him, took from the wall a lookingglass that was hanging up, and placed it on a bed resting against the wall. He also took from the wall a small glass-framed Scripture text, the words on which were, " God is my helper," and covering the text with the duster, so as to make as little noise as possible, he broke the glass. He then appears to have covered his right hand with the duster, so as to get more purchase, and deliberately kneeling down by the side "of the bed, so as to enable him to see the whole operation, with a piece of the broken glass he inflicted a large deep ragged wound on the left side of the neck, severing such important bloodvessels that he died from nemorrhage in a few minutes. Another patient I remember, an elderly gentleman, finding himself so closely watched that he could not make any open or flagrant attempt had recourse to tearing a bit of bandage off the dressing for an ulcer on his leg, and Btufiing this into his mouth. Luckily, he was noticed after he had crammed about a yard down his throat. He was livid and unconscious, and could only be brought round with difficulty. Another form of attempted suicide commonly met with is the persistent refusal of food: this, however, is readily combated by a well-known medical method of injecting food into the stomach. One patient I remember was fed in this way for eight months ; for so long a time did nil attempts to induce him to eat in the ordinary way prove fruitless. It is not always, howeve?, with the desire to end their existence that lunatics obstinately refuse food ; it is often owing to the delusion that the food is poisoned ; or that a voice prompt them not to eat; or that they have no inside. One old lady, I remember well, on my urging her to take her food, replied: "My dear doctor, what is the use when my inside is made of wood ? " This woman, though rational in many ways, maintained this ■ curious fancy against all argument. —'" Asylums and the Insane, by a ' Mad Doctor,'" in Chambers's Journal.