CONDITIONS IN MENTAL HOSPITALS
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] S1R,—The quotations given by Miss Sturges from the last Report of the Board of Control are very striking. Much sympathy must be felt for the sufferers : but the suffering so caused might be enormously reduced if (instead of prisons) cheerful hostels were provided and run by the Health Com- mittees on real Hospital lines for the recovery of the slighter cases who do not require detention. These might be provided at far less expenseand with far greater prospect of success. Overcrowding would at once be obviated.
Relief would also be' experienced through greater facilities for discharge. The Royal Commission which reported in 1926 recommended that a leaflet be drawn up by the Board of Control to enlighten the public as to their rights (inter alia) as to discharge. This has never been done.
Section 79 of the Lunacy Act has a most important bearing upon overcrowding. This section gives friends the right to apply to the Visiting Committee that the patient be released to their care on giving an undertaking as to their maintenance and protection from injury to themselves or others. The friends, however, know nothing of this section, and the Lunacy Authorities refuse to post it up. The Authorities are apparently desirous that the asylum population may remain at the same level, and opportunity be thus afforded for the erection of new buildings year by year. The matter has been continuously brought before the House of Commons by question, but without result.
A late high official of the Board of Control informed the writer that in one instance Section 79 had been posted up in the waiting-room where the friends came on visiting days ; but that, unfortunately, it was found necessary Co take it down in a couple of months—the reason being that there were so many applications that there was a danger of emptying the place 1 Another item of interest is worthy of brief mention. If Clause 2(d) of the present Divorce Bill passes, anyone who has been for-five years detained under the conditions described by Miss Sturges, will be regarded as incurable and liable to divorce, entailing the loss of home and children—a loss in- flicted upon the innocent party.
Such a contingency will immeasurably intensify the stigma which already looms large in the public eye and will scarcely redound to the success of such institutions, or to the credit of a Board which has made not the slightest protest against a Bill involving such serious detriment to those whom it is their
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