Report / Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency 1954-1957.

  • Great Britain. Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency 1954-1957.
Date:
1957
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report / Royal Commission on the Law Relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency 1954-1957. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    34/346 (page 22)
    66. The last complete revision of our mental health laws was the Lunacy - Act, 1890. A major addition to the law was made in 1913 by the first Mental Deficiency Act, after the report of the Royal Commission on the Care and Control of the Feeble-minded, 1904-08, which had reviewed these questions in relation to the whole range of mental illness and mental deficiency and had recommended more comprehensive new legislation. An important amendment of the Lunacy Act, 1890, was made by the Mental Treatment Act, 1930, after the report of the Royal Commission on Lunacy and ‘Mental Disorder, 1924-26, which was concerned with mental illness only, but the general simplification of the law which the Royal Commission recommended was not undertaken. Major alterations in the administrative organisation of the mental health services were made by the National Health Service Act, 1946, and other social legislation in the period 1944-48. The present position therefore is that the law is based on Acts which were passed in 1890 and 1913; both these Acts have been extensively amended, but both still embody many general assumptions and attitudes which were current in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but which are not in accordance with present thought. Our present mental health legislation considered as a whole is extremely complicated and also in many respects badly out of date. The public attitude today and our own general approach 67. The general public now know more about mental illness and are more sympathetic to people suffering from it than ever before. An increasing number of people have friends or relatives who have been patients in mental hospitals, most of whom have spent a few weeks or perhaps months under treatment and have then come home to resume their normal lives, and first-hand knowledge of the mental hospitals and what they are doing is spreading in this way. Some mental hospitals also have annual “ open days ” on which members of the public are invited to visit the hospital. Members of the general public also learn about the work of the mental hospitals from time to time through the press, wireless or television. Popular interest in science and medicine certainly extends to psychology and psychiatry, and has led to the publication of excellent popular books on these subjects. Indeed, we believe that most people today would at least pay lip-service to the principle, which has been repeated to us by witness after witness, that the mentally ill are sick people and that the mental hospitals should be thought of primarily as hospitals for the treatment of illness. There is, nevertheless, still a great deal of ignorance and prejudice towards anything “mental” which will not be overcome if it is ignored or discounted. Sensational and unthinking articles sometimes appear in the press and cause a great deal of distress to patients’ relatives. But public opinion in general is moving towards a more enlightened attitude, which is fostered and encouraged by the progress which has been made during the last fifty years in the understanding and treatment of mental disorders. 68. But very few people indeed, even among those who have themselves been patients in mental hospitals or have had friends or relatives there, know very much about the procedures. and formalities connected with these hospitals. This contrasts with general familiarity with other social services such as schools, general hospitals, employment exchanges, family allowances, pensions and sickness and unemployment benefits. Workers know that they cannot get sickness benefit without a certificate from a doctor and without having enough stamps on their insurance cards. Most people know that if they need to go to hospital this will usually be arranged in the first place by their family doctor. But the procedures which must be followed