The Last Straw
I1EIIIS
The screaming of jet engines overhead can be the last straw if a person is already on the verge of a mental illness maintains Dr Colin Herridge, a consultant psychiatrist working in south west London.
He believes that aircraft noise can affect people in three different ways_ The most obvious way is in preventing people from getting a good night’s sleep with consequent tiredness, irritability, depression or whatever. Secondly, he believes that the ‘scream’ of the jet engines evokes a primeval fear in people, its noise evoking images of distress or pain. Thirdly, the fact that, near the airport, aircraft are either taking off or landing makes people tense as these are the most likely times for crashes to occur.
In one area of his survey, near Heathrow, 26 people were admitted to psychiatric hospitals when the statistical expectation was only 18.6 and in a quieter area the admittance was 17 against an expected figure of 24.
Dr Herridge himself has not been totally unaffected by aircraft noise. At his out-patient clinic at Hounslow he finds that every two minutes? during peak periods?he has to suspend consultation for 10 seconds; and this noise and enforced interruption have made him more irritable towards his patients and have made both him and his patients more aggressive.
A haven for prisoners’families Visiting a husband in prison is, more often than not, a great physical strain. Frequently the prison is some distance from home and a long journey sometimes involving several changes of bus and/or train can be made doubly difficult by having to take the children along.
Add to all this the mental strain of a marriage in a crisis situation and trying to sort things out while keeping your children under some sort of control and the whole thing becomes a nightmare exercise.
In the Caledonian Road in North London some help with these problems is now being offered to wives who are visiting their husbands in Pentonville Prison. Since the beginning of the year, the Wives and Families Centre has been open every afternoon and all day Saturday (the most popular visiting day), manned by a group of young married women.
The Centre is housed in a former off-licence, rented at a cut-price rate from Allied Breweries. The large room was fitted out by a prison working party and now provides a cheerful setting where wives can get hot drinks and where the children can play together.
One of the biggest advantages of the Centre is that children can be left to play under supervision while wives visit their husbands, giving them a chance to talk to each other without interruption.
After the visit is over the wives can return to the Centre for a cup of tea and, if they feel like it, they can talk over their problems. Rested and refreshed they are almost certainly in a better state to face the journey home and wait till the next visit.
The success of the Centre can be judged from the fact that over 100 families use the Centre every week. One can only hope that this will encourage other groups of people to follow the lead near the prisons which do not have this service at the moment.
A million latch-key kids? A report in a recent issue of the educational magazine Where says that there may be as many as one million ‘latch-key kids’ during the school holidays.
This figure has been calculated from the results of a survey involving 10,000 families which was carried out across the country. Surprisingly enough the figure is even higher than during the termtime. Apparently working mothers leave their children unattended more often during the holidays than in termtime.
However, children seem to be equally at risk whether they are left locked indoors or are left with a latch-key round their neck to play in the street. Forty-six per cent of pedestrian casualties in 1969 were children and, in the same year, around 10,000 children were admitted to hospital after accidents in the home.
There seem to be an increasing number of play schemes run by local authorities and voluntary bodies during the school holidays but it appears that they are only catering for a small proportion of the children at risk. Although it would present organisational difficulties, perhaps we need more projects which are even more localised than at present ? operating on a street-bystreet basis.
Drugs for every mood
A world where man is master of his emotions?that is the prediction of an American psychiatrist, Dr Louis West. Dr West believes that the development of drugs is such that before long we shall be able to eliminate the everyday emotions which most of us consider undesirable? envy, greed, worry, fear, sadness. In other words we shall be able to control our emotional life by drugs. As Dr West says: ‘All emotions will be available in bottles. Our whole technology is dedicated to the proposition that everybody is entitled to feel as he wants to.’
But he is not alone in predicting a society where drugs are a predominating factor. A group of British doctors and chemists, in a recent report to the Office of Health Economics, forecast that by 1990 all of us?children included?will be relying on drugs to regulate our emotional ups and downs.
Those who pour scorn on these prophecies would do well to look at the fact that, for example, drug consumption has risen by over 50% in the last ten years. Three thousand million tablets?sedatives, tranquillisers and so on are prescribed annually in this country.
Add to this the number of people using alcohol or tobacco as an ‘alternative drug’ and the picture is even gloomier? an annual expenditure of ?2178 million on alcohol and ?1720 on tobacco.
Before we are overtaken by a ‘drug-controlled’ society perhaps we should be looking more closely at the effects of long term drug-taking and asking ourselves whether we really are on the way to creating a Utopia.
Can’t read, can’t write Although we know that there are a number of people in society who, generally speaking, would be termed illiterate, there are no exact statistics available. ‘Illiteracy’ is a term which is hard to define. What standards of reading, writing and spelling do we demand of someone before we classify them as ‘literate’? What about the person who can read but not write? What about the countless numbers who just can’t spell? A recent survey carried out for the National Association for Remedial Education brought to light some interesting facts about this problem. The survey involved 1,126 students taking reading courses and their teachers.
One of the most interesting points was that less than half the students were of ‘low intelligence’, and of the remaining 55 per cent, 5 per cent were ‘clearly of superior intelligence’, and 50 per cent were at least of average intelligence. In this connection it is perhaps also significant that one in five of the students had played truant when at school.
Clearly there are certain faults in the present education system and the Association has certain recommendations to make such as ensuring the availability of a trained remedial teacher in each school and better community facilities for adult illiterates.
Apparently illiteracy is not altogether a bar to skilled jobs ? one third of those questioned were in skilled or semi-skilled jobs, but it does appear to be an impediment to a satisfactory emotional life.
Among women in the 21-30 age group only 29 out of 89 questioned were married. This is 32 per cent compared with a national average for this age group of 70 per cent. Less was known of how the men fared in this respect though one male student did mention that he had been deserted by his literate wife.
Nearly half of those involved in the survey were between the ages of 15 and 20, but this probably does not reflect a higher proportion of illiteracy among that particular age group. Older illiterates are generally shyer about admitting to their handicap and to some extent will have learned to live with it if they have not already taken steps to remedy the situation.
An association for therapeutic communities More and more of our psychiatric hospitals are becoming interested in the therapeutic community approach and meetings have been held at various hospitals during the last two years to discuss and exchange ideas.
On 1st July of this year a meeting was held at Littlemore Hospital, Oxford, to set up an Association of Therapeutic Communities. This will provide a forum for exchanging ideas at meetings and through publications. The Association would also promote research and eventually establish a training programme for therapeutic community techniques.
A newsletter is to be circulated to members and interested units and people wishing to send in material are asked to contact Ruby Mungovan at Fulbourn’ Hospital, Cambridge.
Applications for membership of the Association are being received by Joanna Holmes at the Psychiatric Unit, Shrodells Wing, Vicarage Road, Watford, and a further meeting has provisionally been arranged at Claybury Hospital for midOctober.
The mind of the baby-snatcher Although many wild theories about the reasons for baby-snatching were circulating at the time of the Pauline Jones case, very little documented research was available. Now Dr P. T. d’Orban a prison medical officer, has produced a report, based on interviews with 13 patients over a 4-year period
The most interesting fact that emerged from his findings was that no single personality type is to be found among baby-snatchers?the people he interviewed fell into four categories.
Two of his patients were of subnormal intelligence. Although both had a history of delinquency, they were placid by nature and had simply taken the babies to play with, doing so entirely on impulse and having no idea of the implications of their act.
Three of the women showed schizophrenic tendencies and had received in-patient treatment for schizophrenia prior to the babysnatching episode. In the case of two women their baby-snatching was related to delusional episodes involving pregnancy, miscarriage and childbirth.
Four more of the patients were classified as psychopathic, suffering severe personality disorders and all coming from highly disturbed family backgrounds. These were women who had all suffered extreme emotional deprivation in childhood and who were now attempting to compensate by their search for affection.
The last ‘group’ of patients were those which Dr d’Orban classified ‘manipulative baby stealers’. All four of these women had used the babysnatching as an attempted solution to a crisis situation. The most common factor in this group seems to be the presenting of the stolen child as the women’s own baby following a miscarriage.
Although the report does not make any specific recommendations, the evidence from these case histories alone is a strong case for looking again at the way the law treats baby-snatchers.
Canvassing patients’ views Although official organisations of all types are continually pronouncing on conditions in psychiatric hospitals, it isn’t often that patients are consulted for their views. The King’s Fund has now produced a report on a survey involving 2,148 patients in nine psychiatric hospitals.
For those who might be sceptical of the validity of such a survey let it be said straightaway that of all the patients who completed the questionnaires only 2 per cent failed to give ‘rational answers’ and only 3 per cent did not complete the questionnaire before handing it in. (This is probably a higher ‘success rate’ than that for most of the national consumer surveys carried out in this country.)
Contrary to popular reports the majority of patients seem reasonably satisfied with their physical conditions; overcrowding was not a major complaint although 28 per cent of the patients complained about noise. Radio and television seemed to be the main bug-bear, annoying those who did not want to listen to either. Twenty-five per cent felt that there was insufficient privacy.
The other major complaint was about the lack of activities. Thirtysix per cent of the patients said there was not enough to do. In fact the short-stay patients were more critical than those who had stayed longer and boredom in the shortstay patient probably becomes apathy in the long-stay patient. Lack of doctor-patient communication was the other major difficulty, and 39 per cent of the patients said the doctors did not tell them enough and nearly as many (31 per cent) said they didn’t see the doctors often enough.
The report includes a copy of the questionnaire used. Hopefully other hospitals will use it to obtain the views of their patients. Psychiatric Hospitals Viewed by Their Patients published by the King Edward’s Hospital Fund for London, 14 Palace Court, London W2 4HT. Price ?1.
Britain’s hidden drinkers Statistics about the number of alcoholics in the community vary widely; there are obviously many people with drinking problems who never seek advice and help and there is, furthermore, the difficulty of deciding at what point a person changes from being a ‘heavy drinker’ to an ‘alcoholic’.
Now a survey carried out by a GP in one Manchester practice has revealed that in some urban areas there may be as many as 50 people with drinking problems out of a total of 3,000.
Over a period of 12 months, certain adult patients attending surgery were asked to fill in a questionnaire. The 546 people whose answers were studied were all considered to be in some way ‘at risk’; this meant either certain mental or physical disorders, problems in the home or at work, people with criminal histories and those prone to accidents.
Of the 546 patients involved in the survey, 15-30 were estimated to be heavy drinkers, 14-27 could be termed ‘problem drinkers’, and between 18 and 25 ‘alcohol addicts.’ Dr Rodney Wilkins, in whose group practice the survey was carried out, feels that as the stigma attached to alcoholism fades more people will consult their doctors about drinking problems; hopefully, before it is too late, before jobs are lost, family life disrupted and marriages break up.
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