LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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" BEHIND THE SHUT DOOR." [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR1 SIR,—In a recent issue you reported the complaints of a patient who stated that they dated back nearly thirty years, and you made the comment that his -story was " typical." In that thirty years nearly a quarter of a million of persons have been discharged from asylums, many of them imperfectly cured. Twelve thousand men and women are employed on the nursing staffs of the mental hospitals and are in hourly contact with over a hundred thousand insane people, from year's end to year's end, of whom many are actuated by the most vindictive passions and delusions. Is it to be wondered at that some of the discharged patients retain their animosity against those who have restrained them or that some of the nursing staff may have lost self-control, especially those who are untrained ? Is it wonderful that a society that has sedulously advertised for such complaints for several years should accumulate a number of them made in the full assurance that they cannot be inquired into and without the knowledge that the ill-doers may have been punished ?
As superintendent of a large public asylum for many years I personally interviewed between three and four thousand cases prior to their discharge, and invariably begged them to show the gratitude they usually expressed by telling me of any unkindness they had experienced or witnessed, and in the few instances that such complaints were made they were reported to the Asylum Committee and inquired into. The • committee also put to all such patients the same inquiry. As unpaid governor of a large charitable .mental hospital for thirty years, I have witnessed the discharge -at the weekly meetings of many hundred patients, whose smiling faces and obviously heartfelt gratitude have been most gratifying.
The officers of the Mental After Care Association (on the
Council of which I have served for many years), who come into the most intimate and friendly relations with the recovered insane in restarting them in life, report that in the several thousand cases which they have dealt with the complaints of ill-treatment are very rare but the expressions of gratitude almost universal. The ex-patients commonly tell these ladies that in case of relapse they should no longer dread going to the -asylum. My first experience of mental diseases was in the post of medical officer to a private asylum of about thirty patients, and when in a public institution, with some eight hundred to care for, I greatly missed the freedom of treatment with that individuality of care which .1 consider is the most important element of treatment ; and which can only, be possible where the numbers are few. If I had the misfortune to have a relative needing such care, I should unhesitatingly resort to a good private mental hospital.
am aware that having been an official in mental hospitals those who are prejudiced against them will regard my state-
ments with disbelief and my opinions as due to the crassest ignorance. But I wish that I could take some of them on -a visit of inspection " behind the shut door," and I believe they would say as did Greenwood, the amateur casual, after a sojourn with me, " I could not have believed it." I trust, therefore, that you, Sir, will reconsider your view of the typicality of these complaints.—I am, Sir, &c.,
MEDICOS.
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