HALF-WAY HOUSE

Gisborne Times, Volume LXIII, Issue 10095, 7 September 1925, Page 2

HALF-WAY HOUSE

CONDEMNED by sir truby KING.

impracticable and undesirable. ‘SPECIAL TO THE TIMEB.) WELLINGTON, Sept. 3. . , 0 i"<>n inal report oil mental liospitals by Sir F, Truby King contains t an d interesting reference to halt-way houses,” the establishment of which he does not favor. He says:— . * Ibcrc has been a growing opinion m the Dominion* of late years in favor of the establishment of a numher of enth'ely new institutions for the care and treatment of persons suffering from potentially curable mental affections, such institutions to bo free -from any association, either in name or locality, with the present mental hospitals, and to he run by medical and lay stall’s not connected with them in any way. The idea is founded largely on the erroneous assumption that persons in the early or incipient stages of insanity should never be allowed to come in close contact or be assdeiated with any chronic incurable cases on account of the depressing and humiliating influence which it is gratuitously assumed the latter would have on the former, but the facts are quite the other way. Nothing could he more depressing and dispiriting than a fortuitously assembled group of patients (male and female) isolated as a small community to live together on the mere ground of their manifestations of insanity being recent, and being deemed curable. Such patients tend to be self-centred, depressed and (for a time at least) more or less uncompanionable, and one of the best practical means of overcoming their anxieties, suspicions and .pre-occupation's, and winning them back to friendliness and sociability is to place them among a small leaven of bright, capable, chronic patients chosen on account of their cheerfulness and good fellowship in a large mental hospital. _ 7 “There arc always such patients available who gladly welcome the opportunity to make life for the time being more enjoyable for themselves and their fellows. The very fact that they themselves go through periods of more or less deep depression from time to time forms a strong bond of sympathy with those in similar distress. They are as popular among the staff as they are among their fellow patients. They set the best example and tend to iead both in work arid play. An evening which would otherwise be dull and uninteresting is often made enjoyable by playing, singing, dancing or cardplaying set going by some such chronic patients. Without them a mental, hospital would he a much duller, and more trying place for all concerned.

“Another fact left out of account by the advocates of separation is the need for a large staff of competent nurses and attendants to draw from in order that frequent changes may be made so as to prevent a group of people brought into enforced daily contact wearying of one another, besides which careful selection should always be made in order to suit the nurse or attendant to the special temperaments and tendencies of difficult cases. The great importance of this was recognised in old Rome 200 years ago. Soronus, the most prominent Roman physician, who specialised in , insanity, is quoted in this connection.

Sir Truby King adds that the more curable the class of patients the moie imperative is the need for a huge varied, competent staff from which to select ' suitable companions. I ast, but not least, is the need for the most capable and experienced doctors m a mental hospital service to arrange such delicate and delicate matters as the foregoing, and to supervise, the carrying out of the whole line of treatment most conducive to recovery. To make almost no use of the professional services of the present medical superinterdents from the curative standpoint would be as wrong to them as it would be unfair to the potentially curable mental patients of the Dominion.

Personallv, Sir Truby King secs no reason whatever for preferring the name “half-way house” to “mental hospital.” One would just as soon be accused of being “half seas over ’ as being “half drunk.” Both means loss of proper control over the body and mind; so does “insanity,” whether incipient or established. • This is not said lightly, but with all seriousness and sense of responsibility. “Of course,” adds Sir Truby King, “it was by ix> means an unreasonable idea that entirely separate institutions might provide the best safeguard against the wrongful herding together of patients with almost notion g in common, but complete separation is neither necessary nor desirable.”