The Waikato Times. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1911 INSANITY.

Waikato Times, Issue 12184, 20 September 1911, Page 4

The Waikato Times. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1911 INSANITY.

A report from the Lunacy Commissioner for England and Wales; reveals title melancholy fatot tihat there is one insane person to every 275 of the population, and that women arc slightly more prone to insanity, than men. More single than married persons 'become insane, .and from the age of twenty-five and upwards the proportion of the unmarried of both sexes is considerably nigner among the insane than it is in the general population. Apparently mora people become insane between the ages of twenty-five and for-ty-fcur than at any other time. Insanity has increased from 1869 to this year 52 per cent ! The , report states, however, that the increase in the number of the insane recorded year by year (is no proof of the actual growth of insanity in the community, although it is often assumed to be so. " There are, in point of fact, no sufficient data for a correct judgment on the , latter head, and suoh facts a 6 are'available tend to the conclusion that if insanity is increasing at all, it is doing so very slowly, and by no means proportionately to the increasing numbers of insane persons under care. .

Whether insanity be increasing or not, there can be no that the increasing numiliers for whos|a care and treatment provision has to be made are due to accumulation, or, in other words, the increase in chronic and) irremediable insanity due to survival." That is to say, the proportion of persons under restraint is naturally increasing owing to the fact that the patients are not passed out of the institution regularly but accumulate in them. The report goes in the light of experience. Three chief causes of insanity are on to review the origin 0 f insanity are referred to, heredity, alcoholism, and mental stress. There is family history of insanity in the case of 19 per cent, of men who are insane and in 23 per cent, of women. Alcoholism is responsible in 21.1 cases of males and 8.7 of females. The following are among the conclusions arrived at as a result cf investigations at the Pathological Laboratory of the London County Asylums and contained in a supplement to the report : predisposition is the most •important factor in the production of insanity. It is the tendency of nervous and mental diseases, or the 'neuropathic taine.' which is inherited. Education, sanitation, and the rest are only the giving 0 r withholding of opportunity for good or evil. Alicohol is a powerful co-effi-cient, but not in itself the main cause in the production of insanity. Mothers transmit insanity with greater frequency than fathers, a nd the transmission is especially to the daughters." With regard to the third cause, the report states that of the two main forms of mental stress, that which is prolongeid—such as worry, anxiety, and sorrow—is far more commonly associated with the development cf lunacy than are sudden emotions and shock. It appears from the returns to have been th-3 only assignable cause of the attack in 9.6 per cent, of the cases, while sudden stress was thus accepted in 2.2 per cent., each form being rather more frequently thus observed in females than in males. This, perhaps, is not the popular view, but it is obviously important in connection with the increasing complexity of life under modern conditions.