SIR, — May I congratulate you on the realism of your article
of February 3. While there is much that is excellent in the present Health Service, it is sad to find the Government still wasting much time and money in applying remedies which were useful sixty years ago, to condi- tions of life which are quite different today, and need a new approach.
The great menace to the nation's health to- day is not smallpox, or diphtheria; or polio- myelitis, but sickness of the mind. In our hospitals more people are there for psycho- logical and mental troubles than for any other disease, while many serious ailments such as coronary thrombosis and gastric and duodenal ulcer also have a psychological origin. The nation is being increasingly incapacitated by mental strain, and it is to this problem our health authorities should turn their attention.
So great is the flow of the mentally sick to our out-patient departments that medical psychologists despair of giving curative treat- ment to their patients in the time available. They can only devote about twenty minutes to each case once a fortnight, instead of an hour twice a week, so that the most they achieve is to give each patient a little encouragement. Yet they know they could do much more useful work in curing or alleviating mental _illness if they could devote more time to each patient.
In the initial stages of a mental illness when a change of environment is necessary, and the
greatest good can be done in the shortest time, general practitioners often despair of helping their patients, because our mental hospitals are so congested, and the buildings of the wrong type, that they know more harm can be done to a sensitive and sick mind in such an environ- ment than if the patient remains at home.
It is to be hoped that the Government will realise the seriousness of these problems and take immediate steps to investigate them on the broadest lines. In the meantime, owing to lack of vision, much mental suffering continues to take increasing toll of otherwise healthy people.—Yours faithfully, H. TUDOR EDMUNDS
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