MENTAL DISABILITY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22657, 19 February 1937, Page 13

MENTAL DISABILITY

Sir, —The superintendent of the Mental Hospital informs me that the medical staff at that institution consists of four doctors, available for the care and attention of 1400 patients, i.e., one medical man to every «joU patients. It is an alarming indication of the apathy with which New Zealanders can contemplate the sufferings of the mentally ill, that this state of affairs is very rarely commented upon by either men or women speakeis in their public addresses. The advance or "civilisation" is presenting mankind with a rapid increase in the incidence of nervous disability; and world trends are now in the direction of the merging of mental hospital departments into those of comprehensive health departments, to the end that the stigma mav be eliminated from mental disability, and that cures may be made the more quickly and the more effectively. The reform in question has already been accomplished in Oxford Citv, England, where Sir Farquhar Buzzard (of the Medical Research Council) slates that similar action on the part of mental hospital authorities elsewhere is inevitable. The Honourable the Minister for Mental Hospitals in New Zealand writes me that "mental illnesses are treated just as comprehensively as any physical illness.' It is very difficult to understand this attitude, in view of the present overcrowding of our mental hospitals by about 1000 surplus patients, and also in view of the statement of the Avondale superintendent. Dr. Craven tells me that for the patients of the Auckland Hospital (who usually average 700) there is a staff of 50 medical men available, i.e., one doctor for every 14 patients. Is it to be inferred that in New Zealand mental patients differ from those of the overseas world, in that they do not need more than about a 25th part of the medical attention now being given to patients who are suffering from physical illnesses? Ysabel Dat.dy.