Steps are now under way to establish a Mental Hygiene and After-Care Clinic at Mineola to take care of a similar line of work in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. This will add further burdens to our social service department, and it will doubtless be necessary for the hospital to ask for a second social service worker at some time in the future. We have found the clinic to be not only of value to patients but also to our physicians who attend. It affords them an opportunity to see and treat various forms of mental disorders not met with in State hospital practice. This broadens their experience and also gives them a better insight into social conditions in the homes of patients and elsewhere. The Chairman announced as the next paper, 'Some Conceptions of Epilepsy," by Dr. C. O. Cheney of the Manhattan State Hospital. (Dr. Cheney's paper appears on page 105 of this issue.) There being no discussion of Dr. Cheney's paper, Chairman Pilgrim announced that reports of committees were next in order and called for the report of the Committee on Legislative Budget. He asked Dr. Mabon to report. Dr. MABON: I believe Dr. Pilgrim is Chairman of the Budget Committee; I am simply the chairman of a subcommittee and will report at a later time. The Chairman announced that the Committee on Training Schools would submit a report. Dr. HOWARD: Mr. Chairman-The Committee on Training Schools finds it necessary to ask for a certificate covering a three years' course. We now submit to the conference such a certificate and move that it be referred to the Committee on Forms with power. Dr. MABON: I move that the chairman of the Committee on Training Schools be made an advisory member of the Committee on Forms. The motion was seconded and adopted. Dr. HOWARD: Our committee has a communication from the principals from the training schools throughout the State and thus has received the views of a majority of them and duly refers this communication to the State Hospital Commission as the only possible course for them to take. It contains requests for a conference once a year and makes two other recommendations relative to dietitians that require money to carry them out. I respectfully refer this communication to the Hospital Commission. Chairman PILGRIM: As I understand it, there is no action to be taken on this now. Dr. HOWARD: It is referred to the State Hospital Commission as being the most appropriate disposition of it so far as we can judge. It ap Chairman PILGRIM: Before bringing the conference to a close, I desire to make one or two announcements. pears to be a proper time this winter to enlarge the scope of the Retirement Board and to include the medical and other officers in the benefits to be derived from the pension fund. We hope to be able to have a complete departmental pension fund instead of the partial one we now have. I, therefore, will appoint as a committee to further this end the following gentlemen: Charles S. Pitcher, Kings Park, Chairman; Dr. William Mabon, Manhattan, representing the physicians; Mr. F. W. Kyte, representing the State Hospital Commission. Mr. M. F. Bradley, Manhattan; Mr. R. McHugh, Manhattan; Mr. M. I. Hogan, Kings Park; Mr. E. J. Murray, Central Islip. Messrs. Bradley, McHugh, Hogan and Murray to represent the employees. I also want to announce that the after-care workers will meet in the nurses' home in the afternoon as soon as luncheon is finished. Dr. HARRIS: Before adjourning, Mr. Chairman, I move that the conference express its thanks to the management of the hospital for the courtesies extended, and to the readers of the papers, which have been found so interesting and instructive. The motion was seconded and adopted. The conference then adjourned to witness a demonstration of the motor fire-fighting apparatus recently acquired by the hospital. T. E. MCGARR, Secretary of the Conference. MINUTES OF CONFERENCE OF STATE HOSPITAL SOCIAL WORKERS Minutes of conference of State hospital social workers held at Manhattan State Hospital, Ward's Island, New York, December 12, 1916. Present Commissioners MORGAN and HIGGINS. Dr. WALTER G. Ryon, Medical Inspector. Dr. HORATIO M. POLLOCK, Statistician. Dr. HERMAN C. EVARTS, Dr. GEORGE H. KIRBY, Dr. PHILIP SMITH, Dr. Clarence O. CHENEY, Manhattan State Hospital. Dr. ISHAM G. HARRIS, Brooklyn State Hospital. Dr. CLARENCE A. POTTER, Gowanda State Homeopathic Hospital. Dr. WILLIAM C. GARVIN, Kings Park State Hospital. Dr. JOHN T. MacCurdy, Dr. WILLIAM W. Wright, Psychiatric Institute. Dr. S. R. LEAHY, Kings County Hospital. Dr. THOMAS W. SALMON, Medical Director, National Committee for Mental Hygiene. Dr. WILLIAM L. RUSSELL, Bloomingdale Hospital. Mr. GEORGE A. HASTINGS, Committee on Mental Hygiene of the State Charities Aid Association. Mr. CHARLES S. PITCHER, Steward, Kings Park State Hospital. Field workers of the State hospitals as follows: Utica, Mrs. CLARA B. JOHNSON. Hudson River, Miss NELLIE A. DOUGHTY. Buffalo, Mrs. ANNA LOUGHLIN. Binghamton, Miss HILDA P. BRODHEAD. Mr. ELWOOD in the chair. We are ready to start our informal meeting. We hope that every member of this conference will feel perfectly free to give us the benefit of his or her thoughts as they may come along. The address of the afternoon will be given by Dr. Thomas W. Salmon, who is, as you know, Medical Director of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene. He was one of the most active of the medical men in starting our first mental hygiene clinic on the lower East Side in 1913. Dr. Salmon will talk on "Importance of Social Service in Connection with the State Hospitals for the Insane." THE IMPORTANCE OF SOCIAL SERVICE IN CONNECTION WITH THE STATE HOSPITALS FOR THE INSANE* BY DR. THOMAS W. SAalmon. I would like to speak briefly of what social service work in connection with the insane seems to me to typify. To my mind it is the most striking indication of the change of attitude of the hospital for the insane toward the community and the attitude of the community toward the hospital for the insane. How great this change has been can best be appreciated by considering the typical attitude toward the institution for the insane which existed one hundred years ago. Usually in speculating about what existed one hundred years ago, we have to depend chiefly upon our imagination. We have to reconstruct the past out of the few relics which remain in our possession. Unfortunately, in the care of the insane, we do not have to do this. We can still find in the United States to-day institutions which must be like those which existed a century ago. In going about the country as I have opportunity to do, I have come across in the different States not one but half a dozen of institutions which must be very similar, with the exception, possibly, of electric lights and a few material improvements, to hospitals existing one hundred years ago. The most characteristic thing about them is their isolation. Most of them have a stone wall around them; some of them have an iron fence. Wall and fence symbolize the same thing. Both the stone wall and the iron fence represent the isolation which is borne out by the spirit of the institutions themselves. Hospitals form to-day, as they did one hundred years ago, a place of refuge for the insane-a place where the insane are protected from most of the dangers and indignities which they suffered in the world outside, but the modern hospital serves many other useful purposes besides hiding from the public view the painful spectacle of the * Read at meeting of Field Workers of New York State Hospitals, Ward's Island, December 12, 1916. |