THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1950. PATIENTS AS PERSONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27291, 18 January 1950, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 18, 1950. PATIENTS AS PERSONS

The opinions of Dr R. W. Medlicott, medical superintendent of Ashburn Hall, which were printed in our news columns yesterday, serve to emphasise the fact that the study of psychological medicine in New Zealand is still receiving considerably less emphasis than it is being given overseas. There is„ as Dr Medlicott remarked, a growing realisation of the value of psychiatric training for medical students, and it is time that attention was given to the problem of providing wider facilities for the study of the psyche in addition to the study of the physical structure of the patient. It would seem most desirable that medical practitioners, in their student years, should receive a much more intensive training in psychiatry than is at present available to them. The manner in which this instruction should be correlated with their other studies, and the point of demarcation between graduate and post-graduate training, are aspects of the problem on which the layman is scarcely qualified to venture an opinion. He can, however, point to the statistics of mental disease in New Zealand as disturbing and incontrovertible evidence that the need for a fuller understanding of human mental processes is great. Since 1940 the total number of persons in mental institutions throughout the Dominion has not fallen below 8000 in any year and new patients are being admitted at the rate of more than 1000 a year. These figures reflect the need for adequate psychiatric care, and especially for preventive treatment. In many countries overseas the aim of psychosomatic medicine is being directed towards providing mental as well as physical attention to patients from the earliest ages, but almost everywhere the work is being handicapped by a shortage of trained psychiatrists. In America, where more than half the total number of hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from mental diseases, investigation of the psyche has been transformed, from a fashionable “ fad ” into a nationwide attack on the growing iricidence of insanity. Public opinion was shocked by the publication of figures revealing that of all the men registered for war service 2,300,000 were rejected, at induction or later, on the grounds of mental instability. Many were no more than neurotic, but the statistics indicated the pressing need for greater psychiatric attention. In 1946 a National Mental Health Act was passed authorising grants of nearly 10,000,000 dollars towards the subsidising of psychiatric services, and establishing a National Institution of Mental Health which was estimated to cost 7,500,000 dollars. Arrangements were also made to send teams of expert psychiatrists to hospitals throughout the United States to instruct hospital staffs. New Zealand could well adopt an equally determined attitude in arriving at a policy for combating mental disorders, and the obvious point of commencement would appear to be that of providing a more thorough training for students in the recognition and treatment of incipient mental ill-health and a greater appreciation of mental influences on physical diseases.