STRAIN OF WAR

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25814, 9 April 1945, Page 4

STRAIN OF WAR

NEURO-PSYCHIATRIC CASES

NEED FOR SPECIAL TREATMENT (P.A.) WELLINGTON, Apl. 8. Emphasising the need for the care of cases of neuro-psychiatric disability, particularly those due to war service, Mrs Charlotte A. Henderson, president of the Women’s Service Guild, in a newspaper article, urges the establishment of adjustment homes for these men.

Mrs Henderson suggests that such homes under the control of the Minister of Rehabilitation (Mr C. F. Skinner) should be patterned on the lines of country clubs, or health sanatoria, where the neurosis cases could obtain rest, sleep, freedom from noise and strain, good food, the benefit of mineral springs, sun and sea bathing, occupational and recreational therapy under mild climatic conditions; and also that these sanatoria should always be immediately available to returned men who experience a return of their neurosis.

Referring to the announcement that a group of mental hospital buildings are being erected at Lake Alice on an area of 560 acres, at an approximate cost of £2,000,000, Mrs Henderson says that if this money and labour can be found at the present time could not properly-equipped neuro-psychiatric sanatoria be established for war injury neuro-psychiatric cases. She points out that the intensity and severity of modern warfare exact a heavy toll, and the right care and treatment for servicemen wounded in mind is a major problem. Not all these cases require the treatment, discipline, or restraint of mental hospitals, as many belong to the neuro class and are not mentally diseased, but are cases of men who have reached breaking point in the strain of warfare.

So that the best possible treatment may be provided for such cases, Mrs Henderson suggests the provision of a chair of psychiatry at the Otago Medical School, and every encouragement for medical students to obtain a grasp of psychiatry, including the sending of suitable graduates overseas for further study and the placing of graduates in the United States’ base hospital for neuro-psychiatric cases in the South Pacific.