THE SEACLIFF HOSPITAL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25385, 17 November 1943, Page 2

THE SEACLIFF HOSPITAL

The public should welcome the announcement made in our columns yesterday by the Minister in Charge of Mental Hospitals, Mr Nordmeyer, that a complete new mental hospital is to be built to replace that of Seacliff. This old and grim edifice, with its sprawling and sometimes ramshackle annexes, was first constructed upon a site which experience has shown to be unsuitable, and after serving its purpose for upwards of half a century, can very well be left to desolation —or such alternative use as the State in its ingenuity may devise for it. That tragic fire last December, in which all but two of 39 inmates in a ward at the Seacliff Hospital perished, no doubt impressed both the public and the Government with a sense of the inadequacy, and indeed the positive unsuitability, of the present buildings. The Commission of Inquiry which was appointed to investigate the circumstances of the fire found itself unable, when its report was issued in June last, to propose any certain method for the prevention of a similar occurrence so long as the Seaclifl buildings remained in use. The decision of the Government to rebuild the mental hospital elsewhere, upon the villa-type design which is now generally favoured for institutions of this kind, and which was specifically recommended by the commission, provides the best response, and the only wholly satisfactory response, to the strictures which were then made upon the Seacliff buildings. The choice of a site for the new institution has, it will perhaps be learned with surprise, already been made after what the Minister describes as “ considei’able investigation.” While he was in informative mood he might have

favoured the public with some indi- 1 cations of the nature of the investigations which led to the selection of a site that might be regarded as rather far distant from Seacliff in the unavoidable transitional stage, when there will be parts of the institution housed both in the present buildings and at Waikouaiti. Otherwise it is a suitable site, though it may be permissible to indulge in a fleeting expression of regret that a locality so closely bound with the genesis of Otago settlement should become the home of an afflicted section of the community that is distressingly numerous. In his statement the Minister made reference to certain matters concerning the treatment and comfort of inmates, notably the criticism by a former chaplain to the mental hospital in particular reference to the meals that are provided. The Minister admits that all has not been satisfactory in these respects, and provides what seems a reasonable explanation, accompanied by the promise of an improvement. Such refreshing Ministerial receptivity to correction is disarming, and Mr Nordmeyer’s undertakings may, in their turn, be accepted. The difficulties experienced through*, staffing deficiencies —very serious deficiencies the Minister’s statement shows them to be—must, unfortunately, preclude the patients in the meantime from receiving the best of individual attention. The Minister’s propaganda campaign, of which he spoke some months ago, has presumably not been a success, or was not undertaken; but it is perplexing to know how a staff that will be adequate is to be secured except by a dual process^—the provision of good wages and conditions, combined with an effective appeal to the social conscience of suitable persons. Compulsion, exerted through a maff-power authority, cannot prove a very satisfactory method of securing service in a mental hospital.