MENTAL HOSPITALS

Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 1935, Page 5

MENTAL HOSPITALS

NEW CLASSIFICATION METHODS. REVIEW OF ADMINISTRATION. (By Wire—Special to News.) Wellington, Last Night. Substantial improvement over the past ten years in the methods of classifying mental hospital patients is claimed in the annual report of the Director of Mental Hospitals (Dr. T. G. Gray) which was tabled in the House of Representatives to-day. Particular attention, the report states, has been directed towards shielding recent and presumably recoverable patients from contact with those of the more chronic and sometimes degraded type. It was satisfactory to note the establishment of outdoor clinics at the general hospitals, reception cottages and separate home-like neuropathic units, and the great development of the. villa system in all New Zealand institutions. AU these provisions, combined with the different system of admission introduced in the Mental Defectives Amendment Act, 1928, had done much to lay emphasis on the curative and preventative functions of the mental hospitals, to individualise treatment, and to lessen as far as possible the disadvantages associated with the temporary loss of personal liberty. Dr. Gray, however, indicates certain directions in which the department could advance with benefit to the .patients and staffs. There was, for instance, he said, an increasing need for a separate institution for the segregation and care of mental defectives who showed pronounced tendencies to violent and dangerous conduct. Dr. Gray hoped to submit concrete proposals during the coming year for keeping social defective cases away from violent or incurable cases.

Speaking of infringements of the Mental Defectives Act, Dr. Gray said that information was occasionally received by the department regarding the unlawful detention of mentally defective persons in so-called “nursing homes,” which were conducted for the profit of the proprietor. Ample provision was made in the Act for the care of people in their own homes, and in certain cases of temporary breakdown, for care in a special hospital, but the law was very stringent, and necessarily so, regarding the private care of patients for profit. Almost invariably the conditions involving the comfort and safety of the patient were found to be much below a desirable standard. The department had so far been content to order the closing of these “homes,” and to issue a warning, but it might be necessary to order a prosecution.

At the end of last year there were 7814 persons bn the registers of the mental hospitals of the Dominion, including 43 in private care and 548 on probation with friends and relatives. During the year there were 115 fewer first admissions than during the previous ye: r, the total being 1050, compared with 1164 in 1933. Patients and boarders discharged numbered 666, and deaths occurring in institutions totalled 436.