Some Points in the Early Treatment of Mental and Nervous Cases (with Special Reference to the Poor)

Abstract

The object of the paper is to urge the establishment throughout the country of institutions for the treatment of nervous cases and of early uncertifiable insanity. The fact of certification leads to an erroneous view of insanity, for it does not make a person insane, nor does the absence of it prove sanity. The boundary line of certification is a purely arbitrary one, and, from the nature of the illness and our present ignorance of it, this is bound to be so. Certification does not necessarily mean that at such a moment a person became mentally upset, but rather that at such a time, after observation showing them not to be responsible for their actions, it became advisable, in the interests of themselves or others, to control them, if required, by force.