THE HIDDEN FEAR [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sia,—Referring
to Mr. Carmichael Mares article on Insanity and the correspondence on it, it is only too true that medical practitioners have very little knowledge of insanity. The medical student throughout the whole of his medical course has a thorough grounding in medical science but only in his fourth or fifth year of study does he, what he terms, " do mentals " which consists of attending a few orthodox lectures on textbook insanity and a short course at an asylum. The result is that when he is so-called qualified to practise in insanity he often gives most glaringly inaccurate and absurd diagnoses of cases that -happen to come before him. Further, there are numerous doctors on the staffs of and in control of asylums who have no diploma of psychological medicine and whose diagnoses of cases and their method of treatment are evidence that they have very little knowledge either of normal or abnormal mentality.
It is also only too true that in niany asylums and private homes the nursing has often been known to be brutal but that rarely, as the reports of the Board of Control record, have prosecutions been made.
If there is to be progress it should be a regulation that no doctor or nurse who has.not a diploma or degree as a specialist in insanity should have any responsible position on the staff of any asylum.
It is hoped that the suggestion that the public should know more of insanity will not result in a general onrush of pseudo- social workers to " see the sights of an asylum " with the excuse that it is their business to study insanity direct from the patients. It is not unknown that asylums are often bothered with people making inquisitive enquiries about patients with the only object of gloating over them in their misery. Many patients dread asylum treatment because they realize that when they come out " everyone has got to know about their illness."—Yours faithfully,
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