MENTAL DEFECTIVES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3886, 4 September 1928, Page 34

MENTAL DEFECTIVES.

NEW ZEALAND LEGISLATION. BRITISH APPROVAL. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, July 27. Dr Elizabeth Sloan-Chesser, of Harley street, approves of New Zealand legislation for dealing with mental defectives. In. a letter to the" Morning Post she writes:— “The majority of physicians will approve of the Mental Defectives Bill, which has been introduced into the House of Representatives of New Zealand. My experience of defective children in the schools compels me to realise the danger to the communinty of young adolescents, who are mentally defective or borderland cases propagating unsound stock and spreading, through promiscuity, disease amongst the. healthy. The time is ripe to form a commission of inquiry with the consideration of the possibility of sterilisation by X-rays of mentally defective persons who art not segregated under control. ‘‘ Whilst a definite proportion of social defectives (criminals, etc.) are psychological cases who would respond to treatment, there are. large numbers who are mentally defective, unfit for liberty, a danger to themselves and to the rest of the community.”