NATION’S MENTAL HEALTH

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 March 1939, Page 13

NATION’S MENTAL HEALTH

IS INTELLIGENCE DECLINING ? LONDON, January 16. The Duke of Kent opened the, fifth biennial conference of the National Council for Mental Hygiene. The Duke said the council was trying to awaken a mental health conscience in the mind of the nation.

“The. question, whether or no the national intelligence is declining, is not merely the result of sensational headlines in irresponsible newspapers," he continued. “It is a subject which en-, ables a great number of highly important individual points to be discussed in their true perspective.” The council, recognising the great influence of the press on public opinion, would welcome its co-operation in regard to psychological questions. Development of a stable and well-bal-anced personality was the surest means of preventing subsequent mental breakdown. Obviously this must start from the earliest years of childhood. “Recent research has indicated that in cas'es of juvenile delinquency the ‘broken home’ is frequently a prominent contributing factor and one which, if generally recognised, should be of considerable help in dealing with this vital problem.” Mr. Robert Bernays, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, stated that the objective of the Government in introducing the Criminal Justice Bill, which extended the powers of the courts to remand and make further elaboration in the probation procedure, was to get real thorough diagnosis of any offender who might be said to be suffering from some mental abnormality. If mental abnormality were diagnosed and was susceptible to treatment, the offender would get treatment and not prison. That was a great social advantage. There was a. new and difficult field of work in which there would be great opportunities for all who were engaged and interested in mental health services to co-operate. One mental problem to which he hoped the National Council for Mental Hygiene would pay particular attention was what the layman called melancholia. One ol the tragedies of this disease was that it so often look people of the finest intellect and the finest character. Apart from the sadness of the disease, there was such a tremendous human wastage in its continuance.

Dr. Lionel S. Penrose, Director of Research Department, Royal Counties Institute, Colchester, stated in a paper: “Direct proof of the lowering of average intelligence in this country is lacking, but there is a largo amount of indirect evidence which points to a genetic position which is unfavourable from the point ot view of national intelligence in the future.

“Surveys of intelligence of children in different localities have indicated fairly consistently that mental ability is, on the average, higher in urban than in rural districts. It does not follow conclusively that, townspeople are more intelligent, than country people, because the rural inhabitants may be more intelligent about the particular matters which concern them.”

Irrespective of urban and rural areas, marked differences in mental capacity and in birth rate were noticeable if different social groups were compared. The assumption was that the genetic factors which produced mental ability of a high standard would become rarer, and those which tended to produce mental ability of low standard would become commoner.

The present rate of decline due to genetic changes had been estimated

to be of the order of 1 per cent, in the intelligence quotient every 10 years.

“SIMPLETONS.” “It is clear,” said Dr. Penrose, “that such a precipitate fall in general intelligence would soon produce a. complete population of simpletons. Ihe process cannot have been going on in this way for long, because, if so, a century or so ago we must have been a nation of geniuses.” Sterilisation was an inefficient instrument for dealing on a large scale with the problems of the eugenics of intelligence. Moreover, the application of the significance of declining birth rate was stimulating people to think more carefully of the possibilities of providing positive financial and social inducements to fertile married couples. “If men and women capable ot skilled and professional work could be persuaded to marry young and to risk having large families, the educational outlook for the future would be very much improved.” Dr. Penrose disclaimed any wish to convey the impression that intelligence was the only desirable mental character; mental health and adjustment to society were at least as important.

Mr. Alev Rodger, head of the Vocational Guidance Department, National Institute of Industrial Psychology, said it was essential that they should recognise the fact that the “intelligence” they were talking about was intelligence as measured by psychologists in intelligence tests. He believed there were bounds to the usefulness of such tests. Gone were the days when it was considered “progressive” to dabble in schemes for setrilising the mentally defective. Before embarking on ambitious eugenic programmes, saturated with a defeatism which seemed out of place in a. genuine democracy, they should see what could be done by improving the lot of the less intelligent members of the community.

It. would be foolish to deplore the decline in the national intelligence and remain unmoved by the fact that vast funds of the intelligence now possessed were literally wasted.

PSYCHO-THERAPY TREATMENT On the subject of menial treatment clinics, Mr. W. J. T. Kimber, medical I superintendent of Hill End Hospital, St. Albans, thought that such clinics should be linked in some way with both the mental and the general voluntary or municipal hospital, and that wherever possible the medical staff of the clinic should be drawn both from doctors associated with the mental hospital and from doctors engaged in private practice outside. An out-pati-ents' clinic brought, the staff of a mental hospital into touch with the outside world, from which it. tended to feel isolated, and it made treatment by psycho-therapy possible for cases which were not certifiable. In many cases treatment involved bodily treatment. Last year his clinic admitted 141 cases. 71 of whom were non-certi-iiable. “Yon need have no fear that patients will keep away as long as the door is open," he said. “The problem is to keep the door open.” Miss Elizabeth Martland, honorary secretary to the Oldhham Council for Mental Health, whose speech was heartily applauded, said the name of the clinics presented a problem. In I Oldham the people settled the name for themselves. They said, “Yon clinic,” or “the neuro.” for short. I “More clinics, more hightly developed. could,” she said, “prevent and ' ameliorate a vast amount of chronic

disease, physical and mental, a vast amount of waste in human life and suffering, in working hours, in health

insurance payments, in public money. In the interests of preventive and early treatment, may 1 beg you to use your influence when next you wrestle with your estimates to consider spending a little money to save a great deal.” Dr. Helen Boyle, president-elect of the Royal Medical Physiological Association, thought it was very important that the clinic should be attached to a general, and not a mental hospital. Knowledge of mental health and its needs was at present, so fluid that it would be a mistake to build extensive clinics to last for a long time.