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6
MENTAL HEALTH. The passing of the Mental Health Act this
year is of great importance and concern to us all, although your
Council has no direct responsibility for that section which deals
with community care.
The Act has been described as revolutionary and being ahead
of public opinion. It is the result of a reappraisal of our attitudes
towards mental illness. In this connection the words of
the Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health in his report
of 1958 are worth quoting. He refers to "the silent revolution
which has been taking place in the attitude of the Profession and
Public to mental illness" and "Thus to the progress and development
of modern psychiatry a new era (in mental health) has dawned
comparable to that initiated by Chadwick and Simon in their
attack on Pestilential Diseases a Century Ago'
In the main, the Act deals with the future pattern of hospital
treatment and management of the mentally ill and the subnormal.
The problem of prevention of mental illness and the promotion
of mental health has been our concern for years past in
the maternity and child welfare, and educational fields. One
small indication of our awareness of our responsibilities in
this field is the account in the body of the Report of the institution
of routine screening of babies by health visitors for a
condition of mental subnormality known as phenylketonuria, which
if detected and treated very early, has a good chance of being
prevented.
TUBERCULOSIS, Tuberculosis in Walthamstow in the past
decade has followed the national trend of diminishing notification
rates. This fact is now wellknown to the Public. This tends
to have its dangers since it is frequently thought that tuberculosis
is no longer a problem. Although this objective is attainable,
it will not be formany years yet. Such attitudes breed
apathy, just as the near elimination of diphtheria has caused a
dangerous decline in the acceptance of immunisation against that
disease, so there is the danger that the preventive aspects of
tuberculosis is in danger of being neglected.
Small signs of these attitudes are becoming evident as
Miss Jennings, the Secretary of the Tuberculosis Care Society
reports We have found it increasingly difficult to convince the
public that there is still need for our work". Nor is this con
fined to the general public. There is a fear that the younger
chest physicians will concentrate too much on the clinical aspec
ts of tuberculosis and other chest diseases, and having little