NEUROSIS CASES

New Zealand Herald, Volume 82, Issue 25172, 9 April 1945, Page 6

NEUROSIS CASES

NEED FOE EIGHT CAEE

ADJUSTMENT HOMES URGED (P.A.) " WELLINGTON, Sunday Emphasising the need for the care of case!? of neuro-psychiatric disability, particularly those due to war service, Mrs Charlotte A. Henderson, president of the Women's Service Guild, in a newspaper article urges the establishment of adjustment homes for these men. She suggests that such homes, tinder the control of the Minister of Rehabilitation, should be patterned on the lines of country clubs or health sanatoria, where the neurosis cases could obtain rest, sleep, freedom from noise and strain, good food, the benefit of mineral springs, sun and sea bathing, and occupational and recreational therapy under mild climatic conditions. These sanatoria should always be immediately available to returned men who experienced a return of their neurosis. Mrs Henderson refers to an announcement that a group of mental hospital buildings is being built at' Lake Alice on an. area of 560 acres at an approximate cost of £2,000,000, and says that if this money and labour can be found at the present time, could not properlyequipped neuro-psychiatric sanatoria be established for war injury neuropsychiatric cases ? She points out that the intensity and severity of modern warfare exacts a heavy toll and that the right care and treatment for servicemen" wounded in mind is a major problem. Not all these cases require the treatment, discipline or restraint of mental hospitals, as many belong to the neuro class and are not mental disease, but cases of men who have reached breaking point in the strain ot warfare, she states. So that the best possible treatment may be provided tor such cases she suggests the provision or a chair of psychiatry at Otago medical school and every encouragement for medical students to obtain a grasp of psychiatry, including the sending ox suitable graduates overseas for further study and the placing of graduates as internes in. United States base hospitals for neuro-ps3*chiatric cases in the South Pacific.