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 psychotics. 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. III shows the religion, sex and
residence of the patients admitted during the three years under
report.

20.  Statement no. IV shows the ages of patients admitted
during the year and the two 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 shows the type of psychoses of those
admitted during the year 1935. The clinical conditions treated
were:—

        Manic Depressive Psychoses.

        Dementia Præcox.

        Paranoia.

        Epilepsy and Epileptic psychoses.

        Mental Deficiency (Amentia).

        General Paralysis of the Insane.