Report of the proceedings of a conference on mental health : held at St. Pancras Town Hall, London, 14th-15th November, 1946.

  • Conference on Mental Health (1946 : London)
Date:
[1946]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the proceedings of a conference on mental health : held at St. Pancras Town Hall, London, 14th-15th November, 1946. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    She says she wishes she were back in the forces, and some- times feels she could put her head in the gas oven. There must be thousands of people in the country who have had experience of group life and liked it, and are unable now to belong to any social integrated group: they are the parents of the children filling the clinics or courts, and who will eventually fill all sorts of social groups, good or bad. There may be distrust in giving up our children because we are uneducated as a group. I think this perhaps affects the enormous number of unhappy homes and marriages more than anything else, and the impossibility of young children and mothers getting into any integrated social group. I hope that this organisation, while thinking of the more scientific side of its work, will not forget that people are coming out of homes where they are cut off from integrated social life. Miss Vanda Steadman (Coventry): Dr. Rees raised a point as to a gap and I felt I would like to express my views as to what that gap is. It is the lack of the complete home. Over a great many years I have tackled a number of jobs: in the Labour Exchange, in Industry, in Local Government, Day Nurseries, dealing with the war-time evacuation of mothers and children, and also all the various domestic problems that have arisen. I now find I have come back to the problem of the young girl with her illegitimate baby, wanting occupation, wanting means of sustenance,’ wanting comfort, and all the way through, in every stage, I find the need of the home life. The last speaker referred to the need for societies and for companionship. In London I only had the experience of mothers coming to the clinics, who wanted companionship. There they found it. In the provinces I find on every hand that there is an Association to meet the needs of every mother who wants one, but very often these mothers are more keen on going to meetings and associations than in taking the joy they should in their homes and children. I feel that it is an important matter for us to consider. The home is the basis for everything. When I worked many years ago in the Labour Exchange, I was struck by the people applying for work and getting the dole over a long period—those who were unemployable and had to be regimented into some order if they were to be of any use to themselves or to the com- munity. Had they had a proper home in the first place, they would never have got into that state, and I feel that much of our work now should be concentrated on looking after those people who are unemployable and have not a home. First a home and then the application of Dr. Rees’ principles.
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