Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 287, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1916 — Every Court Should Have Alienist to Aid in Detecting Mental Defectives [ARTICLE]

Every Court Should Have Alienist to Aid in Detecting Mental Defectives

By DR. DAVID C. PEYTON

Superintendent Indiana State Reformatory

When an epileptic, insane or feeble-minded person is committed to our penal institutions such person is not benefited, and his presence is a great drawback, and interferes with discipline and industrial efficiency of the institution. > • It is not an easy task always to make a correct differential diagnosis in these cases even by those scientifically trained, and the need for proper treatment is so emphatic that it seems but the and humanity that the judges, charged as they are with the grave responsibility of committing these social misfits to some institution, and depriving -them of their liberties, should avail themselves of every possible means to avoid so grievous an error as committing one of these unfortunates to a penal institution instead of a hospital, as is too frequently the case. Judges and prosecutors would think it presumptuous for a layman, or even a physician, to undertake to interpret the law, and so it would be. Is this not equally true of the judge or prosecutor who assumes to correctly interpret the obscure symptoms of epilepsy, insanity and feeblemindedness? Persons suffering from epilepsy, insanity or feeble-mirjded-ness in some one of their various forms may be both dangerous and wholly irresponsible, and may take on all the activities of a violent, willful criminal. These are the cases incapable of sustaining themselves in the field of industrial competition. 1Two conclusions very naturally suggest themselves. First, court should be provided with official alienists on sufficient salary that they would not need nor be allowed to do private practice and would devote their entire time in aiding the courts in recognizing such cases. Second, special institutions for the proper, permanent care of the feeble-minded, regardless of age; additional facilities for the care of the criminal insane and all epileptics should be provided.