The Mental Health Services

Published date01 March 1962
AuthorSir Bruce Fraser
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1962.tb01109.x
Date01 March 1962
The Mental Health
Services
SIR
BRUCE
FRASER,
K.C.B.
This
PaPer
by
the Ptrtnanent Secretary to the Ministry
of
Health
was
rlcliuered
in
the Autumn Series ofLectures
of
the Royal Institute
of
Publir
rldnzini.rtrafbiz
on
6th November,
I
96
I
I
should like to begin with
a
number of disclaimers.
First,
I
am not dealing with Scotland, but only with England and Wales.
Second, my subject was chosen for me by the R.I.P.A. It is not the one
I
would have chosen myself
to
illustrate the
administrative
problems of the
Ministry of Health. When
I
came to the Ministry
18
months ago the
Mental Health Act
1959
was already on the Statute
Book
and
was
about
to be brought fully into operation.
So
I
have
no
personal experience either
of the state of affairs existing before the Act
or
of the processes
of
thought
and discussion which brought it to birth.
Third,
I
am not pretending to give an authoritative disquisition
on
either the legal or the medical aspects
of
Mental Health.
I
am neither
a
lawyer nor a doctor. And though there are experts in the Ministry who
could have written such
a
disquisition for me
I
assumed that that was not
what the R.I.P.A. wanted. Those of you who have special knowledge
of
these matters will find my talk elementary and jejune, but
I
have assumed
that
I
face an audience who, at any rate
as
regards the mental health
services, are for the most part lay rather than professional and intelligent
rather than knowledgeable.
If you think that the purpose of these disclaimers is to excuse in advance
my incompetence in answering questions afterwards, you will not be far
off
the mark. If
you
go
so
far as to think that they disqualify me from
talking on the subject at all, it
is
not for me to deny it. And yet there may
be some advantages in inviting
a
comparative ignoramus
to
address you.
Really learned lecturers are
so
apt to forget that one man’s learning is
another man’s gibberish and
I
am in no danger of talking over your heads.
Until
I
joined the Ministry of Health
I
had never visited a mental hospital.
I
had not realized that about half the hospital beds in this country are
occupied by mental patients; that about one person in ten needs psychiatric
treatment at some time
or
other; that there has been a revolution, and
a
very recent revolution, in methods of medical treatment and nursing care
of mental patients; that hundreds and indeed thousands
of
unpaid lay
men and women throughout the country devote an enormous amount of
time and trouble to maintaining and improving the
mrntal
health services;
10

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