THE MENTALLY SICK.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20323, 2 August 1929, Page 16

THE MENTALLY SICK.

EARLY TREATMENT NEEDED. PLEA TO BRITISH AUTHORITIES. The National Council for Mental Hygiene has addressed a lettorvto various public authorities in Britain, drawing attention to the urgent need for improved facilities fnr the treatment of poor persons suffering from nervous or mental breakdown, of a type which does not constitute insanity. Such people, it is pointed out, form a large class for whom little or no provision at present exists, yet the conditions from which they suffer are responsible for a large amount of avoidable invalidism and inefficiency as well as mental distress. " For the rich who suffer in this way," the letter says, " there arc medical specialists and nursing homes available. For tho poor there is practically no provision. Poor patients liavo, therefore, usually to be sent, if they are placed in hospital at all, to the observation wards of Poor Law infirmaries, where all kinds of mental illness are nursed in tho same ward. This is detrimental to pa'i-.-nts whose illness is of the variety referred to. " Not in fact until the extreme stage of certifiable insanity is reached, when the patient is removed to a mental hospital, does any adequate treatment become available. Much more commonly the patient drifts helplessly, unhappy, and inefficient, and often completely incapable of work for a period that has no definite limit. Apart from the suffering and unhappiness involved, the economic wastage of time and monev is incalculable."

Reference is made to the report of the Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder, published in 1926, which emphasised the need for making provision in connection with existing institutions, or by the provision of new institutions for the treatment, of mental disease from the very earliest moment of the appearance of its symptoms. That report added :" In I ho case of every other type of institution for the treatment of disease, tho aim is to get into touch with the patient at the earliest:possible stage of his attack and to ward off, or at least mitigate, its effects. Not so with the case of mental illness. Contrary to the accepted canons of preventive medicine, the patient who is becoming mentally ill is not admitted or admissible to most of the institutions provided for his treatment until the disease lias progressed so far that he has become a certifiable lunatic. Then, and then only, is he eligible for treatment."

The new Local Government Aet( the letter states) will inevitably involve a recasting of the whole public health service.