Mental Welfare: Over 600 delegates attended the two-day Conference organized by the Central Association for Mental Welfare and evinced very lively interest in the consideration of the problems of Borderland cases, the proper care of mental defectives outside Institutions and the aftereffects of encephalitis lethargica. Miss Ruth Darwin, in pleading the urgent need for more institutional accommodation, emphasized the fact that there were still about 88 per cent of the total population of mental defectives outside institutions with no adequate provision for their home-training and occupation. Mrs. Hume Pinsent and others dealt with the question of sterilization. While admitting the efficacy of it as an additional safeguard in a comparatively few cases, any idea of it as an alternative to segregation was strongly deprecated. Mrs. H. P. Macmillan, chairman of the Royal Commission on Lunacy, and subsequent speakers urged the adoption of the recommendations of the Commission with regard to the early treatment of cases of mental disorder, thus avoiding, very frequently, the necessity of certification. England at present is far behind America, Germany, and Italy in this respect. Dr. Tredgold of the Bethlem Royal Hospital, dealt with the mental and social aspects of the now prevalent disease of encephalitis lethargica, and the pressing need for special institutional accommodation for the treatment and care of sufferers from it. The number of children in whom a very marked moral degeneration has taken place as a result of the disease is beginning to constitute a very real problem in delinquency. By arrangement with the Metropolitan Asylums Board provision has been made for the care of 100 children under years who have developed mental and moral sequelae consequent on an attack of the disease. The experiment is being watched with great interest, but it is too early to make any deductions yet.
Transcribed in whole or part from scanned originals: Presented with or without modified text and punctuation. For absolute accuracy refer to the original newspapers. Source: The British Newspaper Archive.
Referenced
GRO0245 Devonport: Ellen Frances Parker: 1866 – 1949