MENTAL DISEASE

Evening Star, Issue 19325, 11 August 1926, Page 2

MENTAL DISEASE

EXPECT CS ITS MUSES

NEW ZEALAND'S RECOVERY RATE

MENTAL , HOSPITALS’ POLICY,

[From (has Parliamentary Reporter]

WELLINGTON. August 10,

" Tho sooner the public understands that mental disease is for the most part a symptom and expression of bodily" disease tho better,” remarks Sir Truby King, Inspector-General of. Mental Hospitals, iu his annual report to Parliament.

He revives an official .statement mad by him twenty years ago as expressing what appear to him tho most important considerations for the mental well-being and efficiency of the race. “If women in general were rendered more fit for maternity, if instrumental deliveries wore obviated as far as possible, if infants were nourished by their mothers, and boys and girls were given rational education, tho main supplies of population for our asylums, hospitals, benevolent institutions, gaols, and slums would,bo cut off at tho sources. Further. 1 do not hesitate to say that a very remarkable improvement would tal>e place in the physical, mental, and moral condition of the whole community.” Tho report shows that tho inmates of mental hospitals am 2,021 males and 2,336 females; total, 5,257, an increase of 126. Discharges were 425, an increase of 53. There arc 149 voluntary boarders in mental hospitals. OUT-PATIENTS’ CLINICS.

In "Wellington, where a commencement was made with out-patient clinics at the general hospital and an assured success has been recorded, the opinion of tho-Wellington Hospital superintendent is that the public have a high regard for advice and treatment, while the medical superintendent of Porirua Mental Hospital states that, as a result of visiting tho clinic, incipient mental or nervous cases often arrange for admission to Porirua Mental Hospital as voluntary boarders, ” thus enabling us to get them under timely treatment with reasonable prospect of early recovery. In this way they may avoid complete breakdown, which in many cases would take place unless they* had the present facilities and inducements for attending the clinic and the advantage of consultation with doctors drawn from both services.”

The clinic has been found equally useful in connection with Christchurch Hospital, but the report urges further provision before the new year, so as to safeguard persons alleged to be of unsound mind from the indignity, distress, and humiliation of being treated as delinquents or criminals and lodged in prison pending a decision as to their sanity or insanity. Further, in the case of commital to a mental hospital, the report urges tho ensuring or tho proper and humane lodgment, care, and treatment of tho patient until taken charge of by tho mental hospital authorities. In order to facilitate the provision and equipment of throe or four rooms in each of tho four main centres, tho Government voted last year £.500 for each of the general hospitals concerned, hut unfortunately no adequate hospital accommodation has yet been made available for use instead of police quarters, and so long as this utterly wrong, last-remaining link of association connecting insanity and criminality remains all measures making for early recognition and prompt, suitable treatment of incipient insanity will fail to win complete public _confidence and will prove more or loss ineffective. No effort will be spared to_ bring about the necessary provisions in this direction without further delay. ENTRY LODGES AND SANATORIA.

Sir Tniby King states that lodges i'or prelim in ary examination away from the main mental hospitals must bo provided. Four attractive, home-like cottages for this special purpose—one for each of the four main mental hospitals—have been authorised. Three are under construction, and all will bo completed within the year. In addition to such residential cottages or smaH villas as may now exist on the main mental hospital estates, it is intended to erect simple, private, comfortable, homelike, attractive small residences, with full provisions for privacy and capable of accommodating not more than a dozen patients each. .These will bo completed within a year at a cost of £IB,OOO. Another reform is the separation of boy and girl patients from adults, with adequate provision for their care and education. This is to lx? done at Nelson, where provision is to ho made for 200 children. There are 80 to 100 patients suffering from phthisis, for whom isolation shelters will be built at a cost of from £5,000 to £6,000. Separate quarters arc needed for epileptic mental patients. THE CRIMINAL LUNATIC. A separate institution for criminal lunatics has long been needed. “The community,” states Sir Truby King, “ has no idea that the so-called ‘ criminal lunatic ’ is often not at all a violent or dangerous person if provided with a suitable environment and the necessary care, occupation, and treatment, and it rarely, if over, occurs to them that a patient may recover—as, for instance, in the case of a mother who kills her child owing to sepsis and puerperal fever or other temporary aberration caused by microbic poisoning. This may serve to illustrate the point, though, of course, such a patient would not bo sent to the typo of institution under consideration. On the other hand, every mental hospital has a small proportion of highly undesirable patients among its ordinary inmates, who arc quite as difficult to deal with as the more dangerous of the so-called criminal lunatic class. We feel very strongly that an institution is needed for dealing with all refractory, certified criminal lunatics, also with any other specially difficult or refractory patients.” As for the results of the year’s work, the report states; “ All of us are inclined to hope for the best when set-

ti.ng down and classifying the year’s figures, and' Llio-iesiilU is that, the recovery rate may lie given 1 ns 50 ( per cent, of admissions where 25 per cent, or .‘)U per cent, would he nearer'the mark ij : due aroonnt were taken of the probabilities of relapse-and roadniission.”