CONDITIONS IN MENTAL HOSPITALS [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Slit,—May I beg space for a postscript ? My letter on mental patients' lot confined itself to beds, basins, scrubbing-brushes, not because these are necessarily more important than souls, but because they are verifiable facts, unaffected by spite or delusion. But it must occur to most people that where outward appearances are bad—appearances always in their best order when the Commissioners are inspecting—less obvious things, such as the treatment of souls, may be even more neglected. And that' in 'these Overcrowded hospitals, the staff must be too fully engaged in checking tuberculosis, dysentery, or in administering drugs, to have much time to deal with insanity.
I have talked to patients and ex-patients ; I have had letters from many. And though in the Reports, any complaints are usually dismissed as due to the patient's state of mind, many have seemed to me just and reasonable. Delusions are so obvious as not to affect testimony. One patient, from a hospital where the food is so notoriously bad that even the nurses complain of it, told me that on the days the Visiting Committee paid their monthly visits, those patients who wished to speak to them were sent out for exercise. "But the worst thing of all," said another patient from the same hospital, "is the way no one ever believes what you say."
"I feel I am of no more importance to anyone," said one who, after seven years, is allowed comparative freedom, "than the paper on the walls." "For twelve months they've told me I'm insane. I go from one person to another asking how, why, what, when ? I get put off with laughs and evasions. I don't know who to trust, and yet I feel constantly watched. What can I do ? All my friends have left me and I'm alone in the world," wrote another who had been taken, unsuspecting, to a mental hospital after an attempted suicide. " It's a kind of soul-sickness," said a schizophrenic, "that not one in a hundred would understand."
I have seen on one document, as grounds for certification : "She complains she is receiving no treatment," on another, of a woman who had been deprived of liberty seven years : "She is unnaturally docile and has no desire to leave her present surroundings."
If those of the general public who profess sympathy but find the subject "too dreadful" would look for themselves inside mental hospitals, they would find few raving maniacs, no violence and no obvious horrors. But they would find plenty of sensitive and cultured patients who would benefit enormously from friendly contact with people from the outside world. Such visitors, if reasonably intelligent and tactful, would learn a great deal, break down the traditional public taboo, let daylight into the system and even, perhaps, improve the condition of souls as well as of linoleum.—! am, Sir, &c.,
Jo AN I. STURGES.
Sunset Cottage, All Stretton, Shrops.
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