MENTAL HYGIENE.

Evening Star, Issue 19745, 21 December 1927, Page 6

MENTAL HYGIENE.

The mental health and morality of New Zealanders would bo in an appalling way if some figures quoted by Dr Stuart Moore in an article contributed by him to the latest number of the ‘ New Zealand Medical Journal ’ had to be taken at their face value. Statistics, it has been said, can prove anything. If there was not reason for making large deduction's from tlie most alarming of them, these figures would prove that in proportion to population New Zealand has more lunatics than Great Britain or America, twice as many criminals as the Mother Country, and moro divorce cases than Australia. The last figures probably are correct without any reservations. But nobody will bo tempted to believe tho first comparison or mad enough to believe tho second. With one of the best climates (despite our abuse of it) in tho world, and almost the best general living conditions, it would bo strange indeed if those ii ictmonts were true. Yet tho number of patients in asylums in Now Zealand at the end of '1925 was 402 per 100,000 of the population. In the United States it is 241.8, and in England and Wales something less than 364. Tho statistics, for comparative purposes, are not worth the paper on which they are set out. Tho first jolt is given to them by an explanation that in those States of America “ where adequate provision exists ” for dealing with insanity the figures are much higher than for the country as a whole, though still slightly below the New Zealand total. For Massachusetts they aro given as 394 per 100,000, and for New York State 378. In England many people who go hero into asylums go into workhouses, and tho harmless victims of mere senile decay, ivho under our system of institutionalising everybody form so largo a proportion of our mental hospital population, probably do not gu into any institutions at all. They aro cared for directly, and not merely indirectly, by their - children. Gaol figures do not mean the same thing in England and New Zealand. In England the whole policy, in recent yearSj has been as far as possible to empty gaols. We do not know the explanation of tho extreme place -which, by official statistics, New Zealand holds for suicides. If the comparison which Dr Stuart Moore gives must bo accepted, the position is a most anomalous one to be held by a new country. Tho figures, for live-year periods, aro as follow:—Scotland, 6 per 100,000; England and Wales, 9.7; Australia, 10.9; United States, 11.5; New Zealand, 12.3. Probably our rate would appear as insignificant if some European countries were included, but that makes small comfort for its dimensions.

Dr Moore is careful to guard against any undue deductions being made from his figures, some at least of which, as we have already explained, have small claim to bo used comparatively. “In numbers," ho points out, “ New Zealand seems to lead other countries. It would, however, be rash to suggest that in fact wo are in a worse condition than those other countries, as many factors determining the magnitude of the numbers differ in many countries. It is quite useless attempting to draw far-reaching conclusions or to become alarmed because New Zealand leads in the way she does; but it would appear probable that the mental hygiene problem [the importance of which it is his object to stress] is proportionately about as large in New Zealand as it is in other countries —e.g., England and the United States of America." Alter all allowances have been made, that is surely a safe conclusion. Wo have no cause to congratulate ourselves on being more fortunate than others in respect of ills to which, from a psychological viewpoint, far too littlo attention is given. The Council of Mental Hygiene which has been formed, largely at Dr Moore’s instigation, to provide for more study being given to the causes and prevention of mental derangement corresponding with the immense attention that has long been devoted to physical disease, will not lack a field to work upon.