MENTAL DISEASES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18330, 21 February 1923, Page 8

MENTAL DISEASES.

The establishment of a psychiatry clinic by the New South Wales Government marks a new departure of unusual interest. Mental diseases have been treated until quite modern times in a'spirit of despair: the measures adopted have aimed at palliation, not cure. The moderation of the effects upon the patient and the protection of society from his abnormal behaviour have exhausted the skill of those earlier days. But, driven by a need that the pace of recent existence has created in its appalling multiplication of nerve disorders, and enlightened by an increasingly scientific study of mind, medical practice has taken heart of grace. Why should mental derangements be beyond the limits of ordinary curative practice 1 ? Was there not a possiI bility of dealing with them by mental methods'? Questions of this sort have been put with growing frequency and optimism. So long as merely physical means were the only ones employed, the outlook held no assurance i of success. Something could be done; soothing drugs and surgical aid could supplement prescriptions of change of physical environment and physical habits. But a multitude of cases defied all such measures. Then, with a growing knowledge of how mental diseases were occasioned, there came the possibility of treating them by mental means as well. For a while the new views ran riot. Ignoring the

physical factor, unscientific charlatans presumed upon the ignorance of those who knew even less than themselves, and made small fortunes out of their patients' troubles. Sometimes they achieved cures, but it was all largely guesswork. Naturally, the recognised medical practitioners looked askance at all this: educated on traditional lines to minister to bodily ailments: by physical means, they knew that the ignoring of those physical moans could not be wholly right and they were inclined to think that mental healing was wholly wrong. Wiser counsels have prevailed. Remembering how often the administering of a comparatively characterless drug has tichieved wonders when taken in full confidence of its efficacy, and how in their own practice they have sought to inspire faith in themselves as an aid to a patient's cure, many medical men have now gone the whole logical way to an acceptance of the truth that modern psychology has proclaimed. Further, nerve specialists among registered practitioners have given mental methods the chief place in their practice. But there has remained the necessity for linking this development with the whole range of the physician's work, and as a step toward this the Sydney experiment is certainly valuable. With' physical and psychical ministries going hand in hand, there is better hope of coping with the nervous disorders that are civilisation's chief bane.