Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1884. THE TEEATMENT OF LUNATICS.

Evening Post, Volume XXVIII, Issue 77, 27 September 1884, Page 2

Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 1884. THE TEEATMENT OF LUNATICS.

Tite report on lunatic asylums informs us that £200,000 has been expended out of loans on buildings for the insane since since July, 1877. The report further shows that the present accommodation is inadequate, and recommends the beginning of a new asylum and extensive additions to others. The additional number to be provided for each year is about a hundred. This number is enormous, being seven or eight times as largo, relatively, as the annual increase of the insane in England, Scotland, or Ireland. According to the last report of the Scottish Commissioners, 1883, the number of insane increase for the year was 149, of whom 135 were paupers, and of the latter ten only were added to the asylum population. In England and Ireland the addition to the numbers was proportionately larger, but still vastly less thanthatof New Zealand. As the latest effort in asylum building, and therefore, we suppose, the best, has cost us already £100,000, or about £320 a head for the numbers it is calculated to hold, an annual increase of a hundred, at the same ratio, would involve an expenditure of £32,000 each year for buildings. We may, however, fairly suppose that the necessity for rigid economy in unproductive works will cause the Government to consider whether there are no other means of providing for the increase than the erection of the half -prison, half -palace, buildings, so much in vogue in England, and so inconsiderately copied here. It is indeed time that stringent measures were adopted to lessen the number of lunatics crowding into our public asylums. In European countrios, and of these tho model Kingdom of Belgium is especially noteworthy, lance numbers of lunatics are maintained in" a variety of ways in private houses, •while in North. America less than half of the insane find their way into asylums. Our one idea of a lunatic is that he should be placed in a public asylum, and there kept. The constant erection of costly buildings, or of equally costly additions, is unavoidable so long as we continue to allow them to bo made suoh indiscriminate use of. It is high time that the Government or Parliament caused a thorough investigation to be made of the whole subject. Were this done it would be found that there are other means of maintaining the insane than merely keeping them in the public asylums, and that many, some from their means, others from the harmless nature of their disorder, are unsuitable inmates of the public asylums.

A certain number of these lunatics are in easy circumstance**, and although there may be no actual charge to the contrary for maintenance, they naturally claim and get superior accommodation, and occupy room urgently needed for the classes who must bo provided for by the State. It in certainly not the duty of the Government to maintain a wealthy class in their a.sylumn. Persons of this kind fhould be compelled to use private institutions, where there is ample suitable accommodation, and not be allowed to crowd public asylums. Government will find it difficult enough to do justice to the poorer classes of lunatics, -without attempting to convert State asylums into semi-pnvate establishments for the wealthy, or for those whose means will allow of their being elsewhere. There are other ways of lessening the numbers in asylums, such as tho plan now adopted to some extent in Victoria, of maintaining harmless old lunatics as lodgers in houses. This, however, we suppose would be too startling an innovation on routine custom to be tried here. Tho Estimates will shortly come under the consideration of the Parliament, and we strongly advise that attention should bo bestowed on the annually increasing demands for lunacy expenditure. As now administered, this department promises to become a heavy burden on the revenue. There is a lavish outlay in certain quarters that may well bo curtailed without impairment of efficiency.