Triennial report on the working of the Ranchi Indian Mental Hospital, Kanke, in Bihar : 1933-1935.

  • Ranchi Indian Mental Hospital (Bihar, India)
Date:
1935
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Triennial report on the working of the Ranchi Indian Mental Hospital, Kanke, in Bihar : 1933-1935. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    14/50 (page 8)
    This class of patients is treated without difference from the others and enjoy the same liberty and other amenities of hospital life as non-criminal psycbotics. Every attempt is made to teach them some handicraft. Curiously enough some of the best behaved and most industrious patients in hospital belong to this category. 19. Statement no. Ill shows the religion, sex and residence of the patients admitted during the three years under report. 20. Statement no. IV showrs the ages of patients admitted during the year and the twro previous years. Since adolescence and the early adult stage are critical periods of life at which the Biogenic psychoses, which incidentally are responsible for the largest number of admissions into hospital, make their appear¬ ance ; it is not surprising that persons between the 2nd and 4th decade are in the majority of those admitted. On the other hand mental deficiency and amentia, which is usually present from birth or an early age, accounts for a surprisingly small number of admissions, although the incidence in the general community would appear to be fairly high. Idiots, imbeciles, and feeble-minded persons being compara¬ tively harmless are mostly left to their own resources to roam un¬ treated and uncared for in the general community and to swell the ranks of beggars, vagrants and recidivists. In the absence of a Mental Deficiency Act for India, the Indian Lunacy Act is resorted to, to certify defectives of all grades and ages for admission into a mental hospital as insanes. That some measure of reform in this matter is called for is all too obvious. 21. Statement no. V showrs the type of psychoses of those admitted during the year 1935. The clinical conditions treated were:— Manic Depressive Psychoses. Dementia Praecox. Paranoia. Epilepsy and Epileptic psychoses. Mental Deficiency (Amentia). General Paralysis of the Insane. t