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"unsuitable" for education at school instead of
ineducable. Informal admission to and discharge from a
mental hospital (or any other hospital or home for mental
treatment) are facilitated and the sections of the
Education Act 1944 dealing with the examination and
classification of children with defects of mind are
repealed and replaced by a schedule to the ACT which
contains sections allowing of more flexible arrangements
and providing for re- examination at the parents' request
of children who have been ascertained as unsuitable for
education at school.
1960 was World Mental Health Year and it is appropriate
that it should mark the establishment in Walthamstow of a
branch of the National Association for Mental Health. A
meeting was held in October 1959 with an open invitation to
all having an interest in Mental Health and Welfare.
Councillor J. W Pringle took the chair and the meeting
(which was very well attended1) was addressed by Dr. Pippard,
Consultant Psychiatrist at Claybury Hospital. Prom this was
formed the Walthamstow and District Association for Mental
Health with the object of enlisting public support for the
mentally disturbed, disseminating information and, in
particular, founding a club where ex-patients and outpatients
can meet and be helped in social adjustment and in
other ways. This club is now meeting at the Shern Hall
Methodist Institute on Wednesday evening.
The long established Walthamstow Committee for Care
and After-care continued to assist severely retarded
children (and adults now that some of them have grown up).
Financial help was given in several cases and the usual
summer outing (to Thorpe Bay) and the Christmas party
gave much pleasure
Mental and emotional disorders are common; so common
that at least one in ten of the population will at some
time need treatment for them and one in fifteen will
require psychiatric treatment in hospital. The quantity
of barbiturates prescribed annually by general
practitioners (in Great Britain) has increased from
90,000 lbs in 1951 to 162,000 lbs in 1959. The latter
figure would represent, for example, over eleven hundred
million one grain doses of pheno-barbitone - a truly
staggering total. At least one child in every hundred
is mentally affected to such a degree as to be
unsuitable for normal schooling while the number showing
emotional disturbance evidenced by behaviour disorders,
bedwetting, truancy, lying, stealing and speech defects
appears to be increasing.