H.—7

Session IT. 1921. NEW ZEALAND.

MENTAL HOSPITALS OF THE DOMINION (REPORT ON) FOR 1920.

Presented in both Houses of the General Assembly by Command of His Excellency.

The Hon. the Minister in Chaiuik of Department for < the Care of Mental Defectives to His Excellency the Governor-General. My Lord, — Wellington, Ist August, 1921. I have the honour to submit to Your Excellency the report of the Inspector-General of Mental Defectives for the year 1920. ] have, &c, C. J. Parr, Minister in Charge of Department for the Care of Mental Defectives.

The Inspector-General to the Hon. C. J. Parr, the Minister in Charge of the Department for the Care of Mental Defectives. Slß,— Wellington, Ist July, 1921. I have the honour to present my report for the year ended 31st December, 1920. The number of patients on the register at the beginning of the year was 4,648 (m., 2,667 ; I., 1,981) ; at the end, 4,754 (m., 2,717 ; f., 2,037), an increase of 106 (m., 50 ; f., 56). The total number under care during the year was 5,521 (m., 3,122 ; f., 2,399), which is 92 (m., 7 ; f., 85) more than during 1919. The daily average number resident was 4,654 (m., 2,674 ; f., 1,980), or 127 (m., 54 ; f., 73) higher than the average of the previous year. The direct admissions numbered 873 (m., 455 ; f., 418), and included 11 immigrants who had been in the Dominion less than a year, and 12 New-Zealanders returned from abroad within the same period, of whom 3 were soldiers. Save in exceptional cases, it may be taken for granted that persons able to pass muster on landing, but exhibiting or developing mental disease within a more or less short period thereafter, were either labouring under insanity in a form not readily recognized or were predisposed to mental disorder when they arrived, and being so were in fact undesirable immigrants, though not coming within the legal definition of the excluded. In some countries our people under similar circumstances would be returned to their domicile, and I think that this is a matter in which the law should be made reciprocal. Comparing the admission figures with those of 1919, it will be found that the males were 57 fewer and the females 47 more. It will be remembered that during the war period there was a reduction in admissions, which was relatively greater among women, and the present reversal is mainly a matter of the compensation to which statistics are subject in maintaining the average over a number of years. Of the total admissions in 1920, a proportion (.1.6-88 per cent.) had been previously under treatment at some time at some one of our institutions, and the remainder, 726 (m., 386 ; f., 340), were admitted for the first time, a decrease of 65 males and an increase of 47 females over the first admission of 1919.

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