OVERCROWDED MENTAL HOSPITALS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10959, 27 December 1911, Page 1

OVERCROWDED MENTAL HOSPITALS.

(Per Press Association.) Auckland, December 26. Dr Ewington, the official visitor to the mental hospital, reporting, to. the Government on the overcrowded state of the institution, says:—"l wish the Minister for the Department, with the representatives of the Auckland daily press, to accompany me over the mental hospital any night at, say, 12 o'clock, and witness the scene of horrors consequent on the absolutely deplorable overcrowding. • Even then tliey Gould not fully realise all, because the overcrowding leads to practices positively unmentionable except in' strict official and medical intercourses, so; horribly degrading are "they. The patients' beds are laid on. the floor in the passages against the attendants', bedroom doors, and the smell' is The/ attendants have every night- to lift tables and chairs out of tlie'reading'room to make up a good many shake-downs on the floor. Altogether there are about 56 shake-downs oh the" floors in the passage's and elsewhere. ? : A. current of cold air runs along the passages; and we inight ask ourselves how we'would : like to be put to. bed-under such .circumstances or how we 'Would like to know that while we enjoy- a good bed at home our - wife, mother, or father are forced to lie on the floor- in a passage such as is tlie case in the mental hospital." Dr Ewington urgently and solemnly appeals to the Government to act promptly and adequately in this matter.