Institutions for Defectives
Editorial
The problem of providing institutional care for mental defectives becomes steadily more important for the health of society and everyone should consider its implications. The responsibility for ascertaining a defective in the community, is of course, that of the local health authority ; for finding beds the regional hospital board is responsible. Inquiry of the latter shows that most heartrending appeals from desperate parents are constantly being received, and that pressure is daily being exerted on those responsible for allocating the existing beds. But the answer can only be that there is already an enormous waiting list and that no hope of a definite date of admission can be given.
The tragic results which may follow on the presence of a low-grade defective in a home are obvious enough, and sympathy for the unfortunate parents is readily forthcoming from their friends, general practitioners and neighbours. The mental strain on the mother, the interference to the father’s work, the harm to other children and the effect on family life lived in close quarters are also easy to imagine. They provoke frequent questions and appeals to members of parliament, and ministers. But the making of appeals, and the offering of sympathy in response to them, are not enough.
The introduction of the National Health Service did not of course produce any more beds or any more nurses for the work. Nor can it have produced more defectives, though there is some evidence to show that there has been an increase in the number ascertained?due perhaps to the tendency to overuse anything new and to the idea prevalent in some quarters that all one’s burdens can now be cast on the National Health Scheme.
It seems on inquiry that the position in the various Regional Hospital Boards varies but that the numbers of defectives on their waitinglists ranges from 200 to 500 which probably gives a rough total of some 5,000. A high proportion of these are young children. Plans have, of course, been already made in most regions for more accommodation and for a greater establishment of medical and nursing staff. Unfortunately these plans cannot be put into effect without a very considerable amount of expenditure and without a very considerable increase of nurses for this work.
In the long run, therefore, the problem is twofold. It is that of those who control the treasury who must decide whether the care of defectives is more urgent than, say, the care of the tuberculous, the provision of new operating theatres or the supply of false teeth. Secondly, it is that of the community which is faced with the choice either of nursing its defectives at home or of supplying a large enough body of its sons and daughters to train for the work of caring for them in institutions.
The idiot, in earlier times alternately despised as an outcast or venerated, now is seen as an integral part of the human race in its struggle for evolution and survival, unwittingly yielding information of the greatest value in the progressive understanding of the biological structure of the whole group. High-grade and borderline mental defect are phenomena which have come into prominence only since human life has become urbanized and industrialized. Civilized communities must learn to tolerate, to absorb and to employ the scholastically retarded and to pay more attention to their welfare. Subcultural mentality must inevitably result from normal genetical variation and the genes carried by the fertile scholastically retarded may be just as valuable to the human race, in the long run, as those carried by people of high intellectual capacity. L. S. Penrose, The Biology of Mental Defect.
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.