INCREASING INSANITY.

NZ Truth, Issue 252, 23 April 1910, Page 4

INCREASING INSANITY.

I New Zealand holds a soiuewlt&t ua-lenvi&b-le record relative to the number of persons confined m mental hospitals. Cases of lunacy are becoming quite an' everyday occurrence m < the police courts of the Northern city. The brain riisease does not apparently confine itself to people of mature years, or to individuals who have drunk themselves xiito insanity, for young people are regularly being (Committed to the padded cells. During tise past week two lads, both under 20, went to Avondale, and tbe cause of tbeir trouble could not be assigned, while anotheL- young fellow of 24, who claimed to be the reincarnation of St. Patrick, created a disturbance, m St. Matthew's Church ou Wednesday morning during service, and was also sent there. Day by day the vacant stares of the drunkard, the vagrant, and fcbft breaker of prohibition orders, suggest that numbers who are at large arc mentally unbalanced, and "remanded for eight days for mwdical examination" is so common an order when an accused person is •docket! on some tumor charge that it now ■fails to call forth any comment ircm the regHiar habitues of the court. That insanity is on the increase there- can be no doubt, and the time has arrived for close inquiry being msde at tlw instance of the chief medical officer with ' a view • to providing a remedy for this dire, state of affairs. In 1844 the population of the Dominion was (m round figures) 575,000, and of -those people'- one m every 353 was locked up m a lunatic's cell ; while m 1907, out of a population of 93&^80, every 290 inhabitants supplied one huiatjc to be kept under lock and key. These figures are appalling.