*
By
R. A. PENNINGTON

Deputy Provincial Secretary
of British Columbia

*

THE CHALLENGE of mental
health is one that can be met only by
a frontal and sustained attack by the
community, led by the medical and
teaching professions, speaking the
same language and imbued with a
common incentive—the prevention
and ultimate elimination of that least
understood and most foolishly feared
of human ailments, psychotic mental
illness.

We in British Columbia have to
spend 5c of every tax dollar on the
care and treatment of the mentally
ill. The cost to the people of Canada
is no less than $50,000,000 a year.

_ ©

NS SS ae

Searchlight directed on mental illness
stresses prevention against what ts still
cruelly called lunacy in statutes.

This is not spent on the prevention
of mental illness, but is spent on the
treatment of the mentally ill. One
fifth of the entire Civil Service of the
Province of B.C. has to be engaged in
the care and treatment of the mentally
ill, leaving none in the prevention of
mental illness.

At any given moment over 5 of
every 1,000 of our population is in
one of our hospitals for the mentally
ill. This year 1,600 will be admitted.
This refers only to those whose condi-
tion is such that they have had to be
removed from the community by a
combination of medical and judicial

processes, or who come voluntarily.

With the growth of our population
there is no escaping the deplorable
fact that before 1960 this province will
have to spend the fantastic sum of
$70,000,000 on the care and treatment
of mentally ill persons. Far more
tragic is the thought that by 1960
nearly 8,000 citizens of B.C. will be in
our mental hospitals and in the in-
terim possibly 18,000 will have been
sufficiently mentally ill to require
hospitalization. This is your challenge.

Long Road Back

It is heartbreaking for enlightened
psychiatrists to have to deal only with

The B.C. PRODUCT, whether from farm or factory, is a very
effective agent for the further development and expansion of
industry within the Province.

The confidence we express, the support we extend to those
enterprises which are building our industrial, commercial and
agricultural economy, have a vital influence in encouraging new
industries, thereby contributing to the industrial payrolls, which
are the life-blood of the country.

PAVROLLS

The Department of Trade and Industry

PARLIAMENT BUILLDINGS; VACA ORCAS SBeGy
E. G. Rowebottom, ;
Deputy Minister. Seotnaieaes ee

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