Mental diseases: a public health problemMay, James Vance
Science
Mental diseases: a public health problem
May, James Vance
Mental health services; Psychology, Pathological
The work already done in this field shows quite conclusively that
general hospital methods are not inconsistent with the developments
of modern psychiatric progress. The large percentage of voluntary
cases received and the number of persons consulting the physicians in
the out-patient departments shows an unexpected demand on the part of
the public for institutions of a new type. As Dr. Adolf Meyer[36] has
pointed out, "Our organized system for the care of mental disorder is
in many respects forbidding. It throws together all kinds of diseases,
and shocks in that way the already sensitive patient who fears the
worst for himself or herself. It comes at once with an outspoken
declaration of insanity in the very commitment to a hospital, an
expression which carries a humiliation to the patient and adds insult
to injury. It often means carrying the patient off to a remote asylum
which is too widely supposed to have the inscription, 'Leave hope
behind all ye that enter here.' Helpfulness rather than coercion
must take the place of all this." What the psychiatric clinic may be
expected to accomplish in remedying this difficulty was summarized by
Dr. Meyer[37] in the following words:—"It is eminently necessary to
get model institutions in which medical students and physicians can
learn how to deal with the many problems of the disorders of the organ
of behaviour from their inceptions into all their ramifications. The
clinic must do the work for at least one limited district, with its
out-patient and social service and consultation department, and with
its hospital wards. Everything must be done to make help in mental
disorders more acceptable and convincingly helpful. More patients must
learn to look to it for help and the organization must be so as to give
the patient and the physician and the public at large a conception very
different from that to-day associated with insanity. It is not so much
the issue of more help to the curable, but the issue of more work near
where the troubles begin, and work against that which breeds trouble.
For this we must learn to put the chief weight on hospitals and
organizations for natural districts for intensive work rather than upon
the mere economy of large hospitals far away from where the troubles
develop."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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