Milford chronicle., 1963-04-05
Changing Concepts
OF
N entuI Health Care

play this role at present is due
in part to the fact that mental
health care has been oriented
away from him. There are few
accessible facilities where he
can see his mental patients, and
practically none for testing or
followup services.
Neither can most physicians
be on the staff Of state hos
pitals, II for no other reason
than It's often too far away.
Nearly all physicians do, how
ever, belong to the staff Of the
local hospital and there he could
see his mental as we'll as other
patients : II the hospital has
mental health facilities. These
are generally lacking.
To provide the needed beds,
the room for new therapy GEN.
ters and the space for allied
services, lawmakers have bee
asked to enact legislation to
spur the building Of mental
health centers. Under this pro-
gram, local, state and federal
money would be pooled to make
possible expansion Of existing
hospitals or the construction of
new ones.
On the surface this sounds
like a pretty tall order, for to-
day as many hospital beds are
devoted to mental illness as all
other illnesses combined.
We're not, however, going to
have to double the bed space in
our general hospitals not II
modern psychiatric care can be
put on a firm footing at the COM
munity level. In fact, the bed
space needs of psychiatry can
probably be reduced, for with
good care many mental Illnesses
can be treated better out of the
hospital than in.
Studies at many institutions
have demonstrated this. A group
Of psychotics treated as out
patients at Manhattan Hospital
were away from their jobs only
six weeks. A similar group
of psychotics, who were insti-
tutionalized, spent six months
in the hospital and had to re-
cuperate at home after they
we're released.
For another, the centralized
institution will still have an i'm
portant role to play. The empha-
sis, however, will be changed.
Instead Of trying to be all things
to all types Of mental patients,
they would become specialized
treatment centers, just as we
now have special hospitals for
eye and ear ailments, children's S
diseases, etc. In other words,
people would not be put there
so they can be controlled. They
will be put there because they
need the special kind OF treat
ment that can be offered group
therapy or long term rehabili-
tation, for instance.
Hospital beds and centers are
not all that's going to be needed.
To make a go Of community
mental health care we're also
going to need agencies and
facilities to handle special prob
lens such as children, the
senile and alcoholics. We're 60
ing to need rehabilitation facili-
ties, foster homes, emergency
services for such things as
S suicide prevention, visiting
services for people at home and
homemaker help for women who
need 1t.
At the Metropolitan State Hos
pital, Norwalk, Calif., another
study showed that even severely
i'll schizophrenic patients could,
after a period Of disqualification,
be we'll cared for out of the
hospital with as little as 20 to
80 minutes Of Individual psyche
therapy once a month. They also
found that some of the treat
ment could be handled by nom
professional personnel, called
psychiatric aids, who worked
under the direction Of a psy-
chiatriSt.
Another reason why we won't
need to double bed space in local
is that nobody is con-
sidering scrapping the entire
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