State

Mental Health Miracle j i\ew drugs, new facilities, new sup¬ port wipes out waiting list at our hospitals. By < О.МСЛ1» IVAYSOLK f ! Nc« localities, colored personnel hove been added ol Goldsboro's institution lor Negroes Twenty-five years ago. only one state ranked below North Carolina in the kind of care given mental patients. To¬ day. the Tar Heel state is between 20th and 23rd in the nation and getting better by the week. What has been responsible for this tremendous improvement? Many answers have been given, but one pops up more than others. Paul A. Johnson, director of the N. C. Department of Administration, summed up: "The day of sweeping the mentally ill under the state's carpet was doomed when the General Assembly created the State Hospitals Board of Control and John Umstead, the moving force behind the legislation, was ap¬ pointed chairman." The state has four mental hospitals. These are located at Raleigh. M organ - ton, Burner and Goldsboro. In addi¬ tion, there are three training schools for mentally defective children. Two of these schools one at Goldsboro for Negro children and one at Burner for white children — were recently built at a cost of about $4,500,000 each. T he other training school is near Kin¬ ston. The kind of mental care program North Carolina now has can be seen by looking at these facts: 1. The waiting lists for gen¬ eral mental patients have been abolished. 2. Approximately 80 to 90 per cent of all psychotic patients treated in state hospitals are re¬ stored to normal lives. 3. Between $10,000,000 and $ 1 2.000,000 is being spent a year to insure the well-being and proper treatment of mental pa¬ tients. 4. A national authority recently described the training program at a stale training school as the best in the nation. What is behind this achievement? One thing is the skill of the doctors and other personnel of the hospitals and training schools. Another is the realization by the State Legislature that the state should provide for the un¬ fortunate. Modern scientific developments, in¬ cluding the so-called tranquilizing drugs, have been given part of the credit for the fact that wailing lists have been abolished. A single institution (The State Hos¬ pital at Morganton) reported that $35,000 was spent for one tranquiliz- ing drug in 1956. It was estimated that the bill (or the one drug alone will run around $50,000 for the fiscal year of 1957 at Morganton. The State Hospital at Raleigh is making extensive use of a drug for alcoholics During 1956, only 16 of This it the moin odminutrotion building locoted of the Stole Hospitol m Rolcigh 0*c r ibe potf quorlcr ol о eentury, fbc ttofc hot moved from 47th in the notion m the quolity ol <oie given the mcntollyretorded ond the mcntolly-ill to 23«d or better 206 alcoholics returned it» the hospital after receiving the drug. In addition to clearing waiting lists lor general mental patients, stale men¬ tal institutions have also cleared the waiting lists for Negro retarded chil¬ dren w ith the opening of a new training school at Goldsboro. The only wait¬ ing list which remains is for while re¬ tarded children and this is expected to be relieved, although not completely alleviated, with the opening of a new training school tor w hiles at Goldsboro. In contrast to the mentally ill. men¬ tally deficient children can never be cured. They can. however, be trained so that many ol them can make their own living. But some will require in¬ stitutional care the rest of their lives. It was the training program at Cas¬ well which was described as the finest in the U. S. by the educational con¬ sultant of the National Association of Retarded Children. The consultant. Dr. Ignaccy Goldberg, made the statement after spending a full year visiting fa¬ cilities for retarded children through¬ out the country. In order to insure that the same training program will be carried on after the two new schools are in full swing. Gareth D. Thorne, who was training director at Caswell, has been THE STATE. March 8. 19S8 1 О <f<