NEW TREATMENT OF MENTAL CASES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18761, 15 January 1923, Page 8

NEW TREATMENT OF MENTAL CASES

I>read of “The Asylum,” and fear of the taint attaching to suspicion of “mental derangement” have been potent factors in the difficulty of dealing with cases of threatened or apprehended clouding of the reasoning faculty. The friends of those whose speech or conduct has suggested the possible' need of putting them “under restraint” in an “institution” have been timorous of taking advice lest certification should bo made, and if is certain that the resulting procrastination is responsible in some instances for the development of conditions the early diagnosis of which would have had the happiestueeults. "One may inherit a predisposition; one cannot inherit the disease,” says so great an authority as Dr J. A. Hadfield, and "we should never assume hereditary or congenital causes until we have excluded the environmental origin. One cannot but be struck by the enormous number of neurotics whose symptoms started with some definite organic disease,” and environmental and ' hereditary factors during the lifetime of the individual are the determining matters to bo discovered. EFFECT OF ENVIRONMENT. That the case of the person arrived at the stage of entering a special hospital for mental diseases is preponderating!}’ hopeless has for long been admitted; the environment is a tremendous handicap. But there has been no : provision for co-operation between the specialists of the general hospital and those of the mental diseases institutions for the early examination and treatment of patients quite away from the associations of the latter. This lack has now been remedied by a scheme arranged by the Middlesex Hospital and the St. Cuke’s Hospital for Mental Diseases —not prompted by an/ recent agitation, but bringing to a practical conclusion an idea which has been discussed for many years past, and which it is hoped •will; demonstrate Dr / Hadfield's pronounce-

merit that there is 'often absent that inevitability of disaster so much dreaded. Under the scheme the two hospitals will co-operate in respect of funds, material, personnel, and experience in management for the treatment of early mental and functional nervous disorders, securing greater economy, with more rapid and efficient treatment of the patients. BENEFITS ANTICIPATED. Two new wards for male and female inpatients will bo established in the Middlesex Hospital, where the cases will be treated by members of the medical staff of St. Luke's Hospital under the care of its trained nurses. A special out-patients clinic will be established for dealing with border-line cases, and this will practically constitute a Psychiatry section of the Neurological Department. The establishment at a general hospital of a Department of Psychiatry in charge of specialists is confidently expected to prove very valuable, for it is universally recognised that early treatment on the right lines is a long step towards affecting a cure; delay is dangerous, or even fatal, to a successful issue. Further, from the point of view of the patients and their relations, treatment at a general hospital does not attach the stigma which is popularly connected with a hospital dealing only with mental disease, for the border-line cases intended to come under this Scheme, if requiring further attention than can be given in the out-patient department, will be admitted us in-patients to the new wards at the Middlesex Hospital on the same ' footing as ordinary patients in the general wards. An additional benefit accruing to the patients will be that the full resources of a larg<i general hospital will be at their disposal for physical examination, special methods of treatment, pathological investigations in properly equipped laboratories, and for any medical or surgical treatment required for their relief. In this way certification may be avoided, and prospects of cure improved without incurring the stigma which admission to a special' hospital lor mental diseases often brings. The new development will bo watched with keen interest, not only by the medical profession,., but by all whose hearts are moved by the pathos of the condition of the mentally afflicted.—Morning Post.