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Show Mental Hygiene Discussed Dr. H. H. Ramsey was the speaker at the P.-T. A. meeting held Monday Mon-day evening in the Harrington building. build-ing. Dr. Ramsey's subject was "Mental Hygiene." Of the many persons interested in mental hygiene the parents and teachers of children should be the most interested, Dr. Ramsey stated. Great strides have been made in the compaigns to prevent disease of the body and mental health in the human hu-man race is just as important as physical health. The conditions and causes leading to mental conditions are little known. There are two groups, namely eugenists and en-viromentalists, en-viromentalists, who each advance their own theory concerning the causes of mental conditions. Eugenists Eu-genists claim that heredity is the main cause of nervous conditions, while the second group claim that mental diseases are caused chiefly by the environment in which the patient lives. When the differences of opinion are settled, Dr. Ramsey says, it will be found that the difficulty diffi-culty will be settled on a middle ground. A child with a mental disease will not greatly improve when taken from a poor environment to a good one nor will a child who is born to parents of a low mentality, which has been handed down from past generations, improve greatly in a better environment. It is a much discussed question whether nervous and mental diseases dis-eases are increasing or decreasing. The public may wonder if any progress is being made in mental hygiene and if this sort of work is necessary. This question may be answered by showing the usefulness of the psychopathic ward at the county hospital in Salt Lake City and the Training school. There is every indication that mental hygiene hy-giene is a necessity, said Dr. Ramsey. Ram-sey. The public is coming more and more to realize that mental conditions condi-tions enter into the actions of criminals, crim-inals, Dr. Ramsey said. He gave several illustrations which proved that many crimes are committed by persons of low mentality. If children are watched (closely and peculiarities of conduct are noticed and helped, many children who jwiouldi oxdinarily develop, if left unchecked, into criminals and raving rav-ing maniacs can be helped to live an almost normal life, he said. Many, however, because of loss of brain cells, cannot be trusted. ' Many children who have normal or almost normal intelligence but are mal-adjusted, live in poor environment, en-vironment, etc., are headed for problem conditions which must be remedied, he pointed out. There are about 5000 children in the state of Utah who are repeating grades. Dr. Ramsay states that the majority cf these children are not at fault. The fault is due to heredity and poor environment. It is not always the teacher's fault because these children chil-dren do not learn. They become resentful and ugly, steal or run away, in other words they become anti-social. Half of the children examined ex-amined at the clinics held each week at the State Training school are normal enough and intelligent enough to get along in the world if no other conditions were operating oper-ating against them. Generally those children, who are not doing standard stan-dard school work, are mal-adjusted. About 1000 of the 5000 school-grade school-grade repeaters in the Utah schools are subnormal. The remaining 4000 could be helped if they were examined ex-amined and the cause of their school failures known in time, he declared. Dr. Carr will meet with the members mem-bers of the P.T. A next week to discuss "Social Hygiene." |