Flight to the towns

creates a health crisis

The first thing that struck me when, as newly-appointed official (non-medical) visitor, I walked around Laloki Psychiatric Centre in 1968, was that most of the patients were villagers.

Was rapid, poorly-planned urban isation not a mental health hazard, after all?

Well. Papua New Guinea’s National Health Plan 1974-78 indi cates a different situation today.

An increase in the number of mentally-ill persons, of men and women unable to conform to accepted community behaviour standards, is reflected in the more than doubling of admissions to government hospitals between 1968 and 1972.

And the Plan mentions marital discord, child neglect, juvenile de-

linquency, prostitution, alcoholism, crime, frequent changes of employ ment, and cargo cults—all but the last being prominent concomitants of urbanisation.

The burden on government mental health services is becoming heavier as people in the towns are finding it more difficult to manage mentally disturbed persons at home and are seeking medical help more often.

In countries with little industrial isation, mental health services in variably have a low priority and there is usually a dearth of qualified personnel. In Papua New Guinea, there were 102 persons with training and experience in psychiatry for a population of 2.2 million in 1973, and Dr Wilfred Moi, one of his country’s first medical graduates, and Dr Burton-Bradley, author of this book, were the only two psychiatrists.

Because he saw the need for a transcultural approach. Dr Burton- Bradley studied anthropology. In this small book, consisting of six lectures given in 1973, he looks at some of the causes and manifestations of mental disorders among the Islanders.

He stresses that an in-depth understanding of the Islanders' socio economic values and of the inter woven spiritual and temporal beliefs underlying those values is a sine-qua non for the practice of psychiatry.

It follows that Papua New Guinea must, first and foremost, look to the graduates of its universities and para medical institutions to undertake the urgently-needed expansion of mental health services.

Much of the writing about cargo cults has dealt with their societal aspects. Some scholars, eg Professor Lawrence and Dr Morauta, have considered the cults in the context of politics, and a few have looked at them as mechanisms to meet the people’s psychological needs.

It is highly indicative of the rapid changes in Papua New Guinea that church workers now refer to cults as ‘adjustment movements’ and recog nise them as facts of daily life.

To give but one example of this: the whole of the first issue in 1974 of Point, bi-annual magazine of the Melanesian Institute for Pastoral and Socio-Fconomic Service, a Roman Catholic organisation at Goroka. was given un to ‘The Church and Adjustment Movements’.

The author’s view of cults as an

adjustment to meet psychological needs is, therefore, of special interest.

I wonder, though, whether, as he suggests, cargo cults aim to produce a “possible alternative to the econ omic system introduced from abroad”. The cultists whom I have met all wanted ‘the real thing', the white man’s economy, and not an alternative.

Mental health-wise, things will get worse until Papua New Guineans bring traditional and modern ways into a better balance. As the author points out, there are some massive parallel problems in technologically developed societies, and there are good reasons to believe that the Islanders will achieve that balance.

Dr Burton-Bradley has no doubt that Papua New Guineans are “a resourceful and innovative group of people quite equal to the task” of nation building. —Harry Jackman

(Stone Age Crisis; 'A Psychiatric

APPRAISAL. By B. G. Burton-Bradley. Pub lished by Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, USA, 1975. SUSB.9S).

Bush Ghost Hunt

Jim Martin, manager of Mata ranka cattle station in Australia’s Northern Territory is plagued by donkeys. There are so many of them, descendants of the old pack teams, that they almost outnumber the cattle.

When Australian journalist and author Keith Willey dropped in on him about a year ago, Jim pro pounded a scheme to get rid of them —sell them at $lOO a head to Papua New Guinea.

“I’ll catch them, break them In and load them into a Hercules air transport at Katherine for him (Mr Somare), all in the same price”, he affered.

Keith Willey tells the story in his atest book Ghosts of the Big Country (Rigby Ltd, 30 North Ferrace, Kent Town, South Australia 56.95), 243 pages of nostalgic yearn ngs for a return to Australia’s fron ier days.

He adds a suggestion of his own hat Mr Somare might like to buy some of the wild buffalo roaming he outback.

Keith retreads the bush tracks and he mountain ranges of tropical \ustralia, summons up many ghosts md talks over old times with the ast survivors of a way of life which

s fast disappearing.

j.c.