BETTER SYSTEM

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 64, 17 March 1927, Page 10

BETTER SYSTEM

MENTAL CASES

NEW TREATMENT METHODS

OUTLINE BY MINISTER

Nature's medicine for the mind

—flowers and fresh air,

This is the underlying idea of the new policy of the Health Department in regard to the more humane treatment of mental cases, as explained by the Minister of Health (the Hon. J. A. Young) to a deputation this morning. The Minister said that in these days no one knew when he might himself become mentally afflicted, and the aim of the Government was to make the mental institutions such that no one would be ashamed to enter them, and to inspire relatives with confidence in allowing those who were afflicted mentally to be committed to care and treatment. The Government was trying to bring about a better, more scientific, and more humane system of classification and treatment of mental cases. A WOED ELIMINATED. The new system of classification involved the establishment of villa residences, and to get away altogether from the idea that the mental hospitals were asylums. That word had been eliminated from the language of the Statutes. The mental hospital was no- different as an institution from those which cared for those who were suffering from other diseases. The policy was to make them comfortable residential places. The new institutions were departing from the form of huge baronial castles, and were being made homely and attractive. The patients were received at a small reception cottage, where the doctor made his classification and Jhen assigned the patients to the villa residences. Much success was being shown already from this system. Every week the Department was having people apply to enter those mental hospitals, which were attached to the ordinary medical hospitals, as voluntary boarders. This showed that there was a growing popularity of the Hew system among the people of the Dominion. "We desire," said Mr. Young, "to build up that confidence in every way." HUMANITARIAN FEELING. l Nature's medicine for the mind, the j Minister declared, was flowers and fresh air, and the application of tliat idea -was working out very well. In those centres where the work was being carried on the Department was receiving the assistance of the residents in the locality, who saw the thing from the point of view of the humanitarian feeling that the community owed the best to the unfortunate mentally afflicted. Tho Department felt that its duty was to give the patients the best that other people would wish for themselves j what was good enough for a bishop or a Prime Minister, or anyone else, was good, enough for the mental patient.

The present population of the mental hospitals in the Dominion, said the Minister, was about 6000 mental defectives.