MENTAL HOSPITALS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 210, 4 August 1934, Page 9

MENTAL HOSPITALS.

INCREASE IN POPULATION

DIRECTOR’S ANNUAL REPORT.

WELLINGTON, Aug. 1

New Zealand’s mental hospital population shows a net increase of 443 for the year 1933, according to the annual report on mental hospitals, which was laid oil the table in the House of Representatives. At the end of the year there were 7637 names on the registers of the department, including 33 patients at Ashbuni Hall and 525 patients out on probation in the care of friends and relatives. Of 7079 persons who were actually resident in Government institutions at the end of the year, 6761 were detained under magistrates’ reception orders, and 318 had been admitted at their own request as voluntary boarders. During the year 1117 persons were committed by magistrates and 306 entered as voluntary boarders, the total admissions thus being 2423, an increase of 27 as compared with the previous year. The department was able to discharge 601 persons, including both patients and voluntary boarders, or 42.23 per cent, calculated on the number admitted, but of these only 489, or 34.3 per cent., could fairly be regarded as recovered. The remaining 112 were regarded as “relieved” or “not improved,” but circumstances permitted that their care should he resumed by their relatives. The death rate was 5.16 per cent., which is the lowest recorded for 40 years. “The care and training of congenitally defective children presents a problem which is essentially different from the treatment and custody of persons suffering from mental disorders,” states Dr. T. G. Gray in his report, “and it has long been the aim ot the department to establish separate institutional accommodation for these defective children apart from the mental hospitals proper. In 1929 Templeton Farm, near Christchurch, was established as a colony school for feeble-minded children, and over 200 children are now in residence there. Few, if any, of these children have been able to benefit by the ordinary or even special class methods of education, but with proper training many of the boys have become surprisingly proficient at gardening and farming pursuits, and not a lew of the girls have been taught to knit and sew and to carry out other simple domestic duties with a reasonable degree of competence. Many of the original child inmates of Temple-ton Farm are growing into manhood, and it lias been decided to proceed with the erection of an adult division of the colony. This will be situated at Jenkins Farm, which lies next to Templeton. “Last year I discussed the relative importance of environment and heredity "in the genesis of mental disorder, and I expressed the view that environmental stresses do not readily give rise to mental disorder in persons who have inherited stable nervous equipment. Although responsible opinions point to defective inheritance as being by far the most potent cause of mental defect and mental disorder, this does not by any means justifiy us in adopting a fatalistic attitude towards these conditions. Congenital mental defect is not curable, but by means of suitable training from an early uge a great deal can be done to lessen the dependence of the individual and to prevent much misery and unhappiness on the part of the parents. So far as mental disorders are concerned it cannot he too widely understood that no specific mental disease is inherited. There is no real ground for the deep-rooted dread that so many people have because of the occurrence of sporadic mental disorder in the family circle. If the implications of defective inheritance were better realised and frankly considered, if due weight were given to the complementary need on the part of the children concerned for wise guidance, the avoidance of crammed education, and the inculcation of a rational, well-bal-anced, tolerant philosophy, then I believe that in many cases inherited instability would not come to express itself as mental disorder.”