MENTAL HOSPITALS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22329, 1 August 1934, Page 9

MENTAL HOSPITALS

INCREASE IN POPULATION DIRECTOR'S ANNUAL REPORT (From Ocr Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, July 31. New Zealand’s mental hospital population shows a net increase of 443 for the year 1933, according to the annual report on mental hospitals, which was laid on the table in the House of Representatives to-day. At the end of the year theie were 7637 names on the registers of the department, including £3 patients at Ashburn Hall and 525 patients out on probation in the care of friends and relatives. Of 7079 persons who were actually resident in Government institutions at the end of the year, 6761 were detained under magistrates’ reception orders, and 318 had been admitted at theii own request as voluntary boarders. During the year 1117 persons were committed by magistrates and 306 entered as voluntary boarders, the total admissions thus being 2423, an increase of 27 as compared with the previous year. The department was able to discharge 601 persons, including both patients and voluntary boarders, or 42.23 per cent, calculated on the number admitted, out of these only 489, or 34.3 per cent., could fairly be regarded as recovered. The remaining 112 were regarded as “relieved” or “ not improved,” but circumstances permitted that their care could be resumed by their relatives. _ The death rate was 5.16 per cent., which is the lowest recorded for 40 years. “ The care and training of congenitally defective children presents a problem which is essentially different from the treatment and custody of persons suffering from mental disorders," states Dr T. G. Gray in his report, “ and it has long been the aim of the department to establish separate institutional accommodation for these defective children apart from the mental hospitals proper. In 1929 Templeton Farm, near Christchurch, was established as a colony school for feeble-minded children, and over 200 children are now in residence there. Few, if any, of these children have been able to benefit by the ordinary or even special class methods of education, but with proper training many of the boys have become surprisingly proficient at gardening and farming pursuits, and not a few ot the girls have, been taught to knit and sew and to carry out other simple domestic duties with a reasonable degree of competence. Many of the orginal child inmates of Templeton Farm are growing into manhood, and it has been decided to proceed with the erection of an adult division of the colony. This will be situated at Jenkins Farm, which lies next to Templeton. “ Last year I discussed the relative importance of environment and heredity in the genesis of mental disorder, and 1 expressed the view that environmental stresses do not readily give rise to mental disorder in persons who have inherited stable nervous equipment. Although responsible opinions point to detective inheritance as being by far the most potent cause of mental defect and mental disorder, this does not by any mea“ns justify us in adopting a fatalistic attitude towards these conditions. Congenital mental defect is not curable, but by means of suitable training from an early, age a great deal can be done to lessen the dependence of the individual and to prevent much misery and unhappiness on the part of the parents. So far as mental disorders are concerned it cannot be too widely understood that no specific mental jliseasc is inherited. There is no real ground for the deep-rooted dread that so many people have because of the occurrence of sporadic mental disorder in the family circle. • If the implications of defective inheritance were better realised and frankly considered, if due weight were given to the complementary need on the part of the children concerned for wise guidance, the avoidance of crammed education, and the inculcation of a rational, well-balanced, tolerant philosophy, then I believe that in many cases inherited instability would not come to express itself as mental disorder.”