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5. Increasing use of Mental Hospitals.—From overcrowding and from
the fact that a large number of requests for admission had to be refused for
want of accommodation it is clear that these hospitals are growing in popu-
larity and that public consciousness is being awakened in regard to the use
of these institutions. The demand for admissions in some hospitals had
sometimes been so great that even criminal insanes had to be lodged in
jails where there were no satisfactory arrangements for treatment. Better
methods of treatment, improved sanitary conditions and other facilities
offered by the mental hospitals are being appreciated by the public.
6. System of sending inmates of mental hospitals on parole.—In Madras
convalescent patients of the Madras Mental Hospital are sent home on
parole for 30 days at a time. The system has been in vogue for some years
under the approval of the Surgeon General but has not been recognised by
an Act of the local legislature. It has proved very useful. Though the
question is under consideration in Bombay the system does not yet prevail
there, nor does it obtain in the Punjab, Assam, Sind, Orissa, Baluchistan
and Coorg. There is no mental hospital in Bengal, but the mentally defec-
tive patients of the province go to the Mental Hospitals in Bihar, where
the system of sending patients on parole is in force as it is at the Mental
Hospital, Agra, but not at the two other mental hospitals at Bareilly and
Benares in the United Provinces. Patients are also discharged on parole in
the Central Provinces and Berar and the North-West Frontier Province.
7. Probable causes and types of insanity.—Among the predisposing
causes of insanity, judged from the condition of admissions during the year
1936, were mental and moral stress, business and domestic worries, addic-
tion to drugs and drinks, infections, previous attacks and hereditary pre
disposition. The largest number of cases were between the ages of 20 to
40. Out of a total of 11,792 cases of insanity in 1936, 839 were due to
mental deficiency, 1,187 to maniacal depressive insanity, 1,949 to mania,
1,441 to melancholia and 2,195 to schizophrenia including dementia prae-
cox. Other principal types of the diseases were cannabis indica, addiction,
psychosis, epilepsy, paranoia and paranoid states and secondary dementia.
8. Psychiatric Clinics.—Psychiatric clinics attached to large hospitals,
medical schools and colleges do not exist in Madras for the treatment of
mentally defective patients. In Bombay there is a psychiatric clinic attach
ed to the J. J. Hospital, Bombay, in the charge of an Honorary Medical
Officer, who runs it for two days in a week. Bengal has a clinic attached
to the Carmichael Medical College, Belgachia, managed by a committee
appointed for the purpose. There is a small clinic attached to the King
George Medical College Hospital, Lucknow, in the United Provinces, which
is a sub-section of the medical out-patient department of the College Hos-
pital and is in charge of the physician of that department. No such clinics
exist in the Punjab, Bihar, Central Provinces and Berar, Assam, North-
West Frontier Province, Orissa, Baluchistan and Coorg.
9. Training of mentally defective children.—No separate institution for
the training of mentally defective children exists in Madras, but a training
class of about 15 children, who were inmates of the Madras Mental Hospital,