Annual report of the Board of Control : 32nd, 1945.

Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Annual report of the Board of Control : 32nd, 1945. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    6/64 (page 2)
    Section II of the Report is our report on the work of the year 1945. It contains the material usually published, but conditions in this year cannot, of course, be regarded as normal. At the end of the year bed-space for 17,020 mental patients still remained diverted to war-time services ; while 847 beds could not be used owing to shortage of staff, a feature which has emerged as the most disturbing and intractable problem in the Mental Health Service. At the end of the year 1945, the total number of persons under care under the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts was 146,027, a decrease during the year of 241 ; compared with a decrease of 1,289 during 1944. The direct admissions to all forms of care under the Lunacy and Mental Treatment Acts in 1945 were 33,961—the highest on record. We are glad to be able to report that no fewer than 17,210 or 50*7 per cent, were voluntary. The total number of patients discharged was also the highest on record and was 71*7 per cent, of the direct admissions compared with an average of 66*8 for the preceding quinquennium. In the administration of the Mental Deficiency Acts, the most acute difficulty is shortage of institutional accommodation and of staff, it being frequently impossible to find vacancies for defectives urgently needing institutional care. The only ultimate solution is the resumption of building to put into effect long-delayed schemes of extensions. Meanwhile the return of beds diverted to the E.M.S. and recruitment of staff to put these into commission is the only immediate hope of remedying an unsatisfactory and at times dangerous situation. The year has been marked by important changes in the Board. On 31st March, 1945, Sir Laurence Brock, who had been Chairman of the Board for seventeen years—a longer period than any of his predecessors—retired from the Public Service. By his retirement the Service and the Board in particular have sustained a severe loss. The second year of his Chairmanship saw the passing of the Mental Treatment Act and to him fell the exacting task of re-organising the Board of Control and launching the important new developments in the mental health service for which the Act provided. Sir Laurence Brock laboured unceasingly to foster close and cordial relations between the Board and Local Authorities and all who are engaged in the local administration of the mental health service. In the wide range of his work, special mention should perhaps be made of the Committee on Sterilisa¬ tion of which he was Chairman. The Report which he drafted has become one of the standard works on this acutely controversial subject. The last five and a half years of Sir Laurence Brock’s Chairmanship were war years, during which he skilfully guided the Board and the mental health service through the immense difficulties created by the dislocation of the service under war conditions. His wide experience, his balanced judgment and his brilliant gifts, notably his powers of lucid exposition, have lent a special distinction to his tenure of the Chairmanship ; and we shall feel his loss not only on those grounds but also on personal grounds for he had won the confidence and esteem of all who had the privilege of serving under him. In succession to Sir Laurence Brock, His Majesty, on the recommendation of the Minister of Health, appointed Mr. Percy Barter to be a Senior Com¬ missioner, and the Minister appointed him to be Chairman of the Board as from 1st April, 1945. Mr. Barter had been a Principal Assistant Secretary to the Ministry of Health since 1940 ; having been Secretary of the Board of Control from 1930—1939. On 31st March, 1945, the Board suffered a further serious loss by the retire¬ ment of Sir Hubert Bond. He had been a member of the Board since its