IN THE MENTAL HOSPITALS

Taranaki Daily News, 7 August 1930, Page 11

IN THE MENTAL HOSPITALS

NO DROP IN COMMITTALS. good percentage recover. (Bv Wire.— Parliamentary Reporter). Wellington, Last Night. The number of persons under care and treatment in the mental hospitals of the Dominion at the end of the year 1929-30 was 6348, of whom 6093 had been committed under magistrates’ reception orders and 255 received upon their own application as voluntary boarderc. The net total increase of the population at the close of the period was- 188 persons. Committals numbered 950, the same as last year, but applications for voluntary admission weie 32 less. This drop is due in some measure to the fact that patients who would formerly have been admitted voluntarily are now treated as out-patients at clinics at general hospitals. Of the total admissions 21.25 per cent, were on the voluntary basis. Duiing the year 518 patients and voluntary boarders were discharged as recovered, which is 42.6 per cent, calculated upon the. admissions. Of the voluntary boarders 88 per cent, recovered and were discharged within twelve months, while the ’figure in the case of committed patients, whose mental disoidei is generally well advanced when they came to an institution was 30.23 per cent.