A MANY-SIDED PROBLEM.

Waikato Times, Volume 97, Issue 1600, 31 May 1924, Page 6

A MANY-SIDED PROBLEM.

The Commission appointed by the Government in connection with mental defectives has commenced to lake evidence. That already given tends io demonstrate the reality of the menace and the need for measures to effectively deal therewith. The appointment of the Commission was commendable, and if it gets the support to which it is entitled the Minister of Health may bo provided with sufficient information to indicate a policy. The problem is many-sided. There are feeble-minded children whose trouble is chiefly arrested deevlopment—the sub-normal who may, with wise and sympathetic treatment, become normal: there are the congenitally and permanently feeble-minded who should never have been born; there are degenerates who have made themselves degenerate, and there arc people (of both sexes) whose preverted habits are the outcome of diseased brains. Then there are the' —greatest problem of all —people whose conduct is abnormal onlv in one direction, and who may, in other respects, be of firstclass capacity. The committee should not have a great deal of difficulty in arriving l at conclusions concerning the feeble-minded in the ordinary simple sense, but tiie problem of the others is baffling almost to despair. When they offend against morality and decency, the 'administrators of the law feel hopelessly incapable of holding the balance fairly between justice and humanity. To our credit it can be said that our Courts err usually on the side of leniency: while every effort is made to protect society, our judges are scrupulouslv careful to protect degenerates from the mob passions of juries and the violence, of outraged nublic feelings. What they cannot do, with such limited knowledge as society yet has. is to decide where to send a mian who is neither insane in the popular sense nor sane in reality, and how to treat an unfortunate who is too muni the victim of his constitution to deserve orison, too baffling a subject to respond well, to hospital treatment, and too unlike an ordinary mental case to be handed over to the alienist. Though, the number of such people is not large relatively it roaches a depressing figure in the aggregate, and the most immediate of all problems associated wilii them is to prevent their natural increase. The evidence given by Mr John Caughley, the Director-General of Education, at Wellington yesterday indicates the seriousness of the problem, and we would like to think that he has outlined a satisfactory solution. . While there can be little doubt that complete segregation of the feeble-minded would lie. efficacious, ■ the difficulty would be their elimination from the general population for &egregat!on purposes. This might he a comparatively easy matter in the pronounced types: but it would border on the impossible in cases where the person is neither insane in the popular sense nor sane in reality.