EARLY AND BETTER TREATMENT.

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 120, 25 May 1925, Page 4

EARLY AND BETTER TREATMENT.

It is recognised now that many cases of mental sickness, if given skilled treatment in the early stages, are curable as certainly as physical disease. Hitherto, however, early treatment has not been fairly tested, because sufferers and their friends have hesitated, fearing that treatment may involve unpleasant association with advanced and incurable patients. The removal of this cause of hesitation is one of the main purposes of the reforms which the Minister of Health proposes to bring into operation. The plan has evidently been prepared with care and consideration for the feelings of those whom it is desired to help. In the first place, there will be consultation and advice available at the principal general hospitals of the Dominion, so that persons who are worried but in no way incapacitated may be helped. Then, if further assistance is needed, there will be sanatoria which they may enter. These sanatoria will not even be in sight of the mental hospitals, and will resemble rather the establishments of health and holiday resorts, with such provision for rest, recreation, and treatment as each patient may need. It is hoped and expected that many patients, after a period of such treatment, will be able to return to their former occupations, renewed in strength of body and mind and with no unpleasant memories.

For other patients also the Minister plans better conditions. It is intended to change completely the method of admission and to avoid the necessity of keeping any patient in police cells while the legal and medical examination takes place. The general hospitals are to be asked to provide temporary accommodation for patients, and afterwards there will be observation lodges, which will make classification of new patients much easier than it is' at present. Apart from these' reforms, it is proposed to make substantial improvements m existing institutions, to prevent overcrowding, and to increase efficiency. The whole scheme is worthy of the highest commendation, and Sir Maui Poinare and his cxperb advisers have earned the public gratitude for tho earnest attention they have given to a difficult task. •The subject is one which does not often receive the public thought given to less distressing topics, and we must therefore be doubly grate±ul to those who have planned so thoroughly to lessen the burden of mental stress by the best curative treatment and to assure humanitarian care when the possibility of cures is remote.