Mental diseases: a public health problemMay, James Vance
Science
Mental diseases: a public health problem
May, James Vance
Mental health services; Psychology, Pathological
Nothing is more important in the modern hospital than the training
school for nurses. It is the nursing care of the patients more than
any other one thing perhaps that has made the difference between the
old time asylum and the psychiatric hospital of the highest type. The
state hospital training school of the present day offers its pupils
a three years' course of instruction, including a year of practical
experience in an affiliated general hospital. Its graduates, moreover,
are trained not only in psychiatric and general nursing, as well as
the care of neurological cases, but in hydrotherapy, occupational
therapy, reeducational, industrial and social work. The nurse of the
future who has had no psychiatric training and experience is one whose
education is not complete. Every effort should be made to encourage the
training schools of general hospitals to send their senior nurses to a
hospital for mental diseases for a service of at least three months.
The specialized care and treatment of cases suffering from tuberculosis
has been neglected in many institutions. It should not be necessary to
suggest that such cases have no place in a ward with other patients
who have not contracted that disease, and yet in many of our large and
important hospitals there are no separate buildings for that purpose.
It has been shown by statistical studies that persons suffering from
dementia praecox have an unusual and remarkable susceptibility to
tuberculosis. Unfortunately, it has never been possible to completely
segregate the epileptics in our public hospitals for mental diseases.
They constitute a special problem and should receive a different diet
as well as an entirely different type of treatment. Their presence in
the wards with mental cases is highly detrimental to both. This is
equally true of drug cases and mental defectives, and especially the
so-called defective delinquents.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account