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17.
For many of these unfortunates
institutional placement is the only real solution but this
is sadly deficient. Requests have been made to the County
Medical Officer of Health to obtain institutional placement
in cases where it appears essential.such as when the violent
uncontrolled behaviour of the mentally disordered child is
constituting a real physical danger to the rest of the
family. Dr. Stewart has made every effort but the Regional
Hospital Board reply that the institutional beas are just
not available and the najne will be added to a waiting list.
In hospitals of all types there were vacancies for 21,000
nurses, and 10,417 beds (1,019 in this R. H. B area) could
not be used because of staff shortage.
This problem is quite general throughout the country;
even if suitable institutions were built it would be
extremely difficult to find nurses to staff them. Many of
the severely defective are doubly incontinent and some
need to be watched continually, often they need to be fed
like babies so that it is almost one person's work to look
after each of them.
Dr. Watkins considers that the best solution would be
for all hospitals to allocate a small proportion of their
beds to this type of case so as to spread the burden more
evenly both on hospital accommodation and on the nurses
themselves since the normal rotation of duties in a general
hospital would ensure that a nurse was not obliged to spend
more than a few months on this particularly arduous and
unrewarding work.
The Mental Health Act of 1959 which came into force in
November repeals the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts of
1890 to 1930 and the Mental Deficiency Acts of 1913 to 1938
and it has been generally welcomed as a concrete expression
of the improved attitude towards mental illness and mental
defect which has been growing up in the profession
concerned and among the public generally over the past ten
or fifteen years. The social stigma and sense of guilt
which used to be associated with these conditions is
gradually disappearing. The old descriptions " being of
unsound mind ". " idiot "imbecile" and "feebleminded"
have been abolished and replaced by the
comprehensive term " mentally disordered". Mental
defectives become " subnormal" or " severely subnormal"
and children below the level of educability are now deemed