The Hospitals as Part of the Mental Health Service *The first part of an address given to the Chaplains' Conference held by the National Association for Mental Health, November 1955.

I have been invited to speak to you on mental hospitals and what they contribute to the Mental Health Service. I suppose the most natural and immediate reaction of any member of the laity, on being invited to address a gathering of chaplains, is to reflect on any possible spiritual aspects of his theme. I confess to having experienced some considerable dismay on being told I was to talk to you just about mental hospitals, because I cannot think of any more unspiritual place than a mental hospital, albeit that it professes to deal with disorders of the spirit. Indeed, the statute book suggests that we mental hospital people are very much in need of spiritual guidance, for it decrees that the very first officer to be appointed to the staff of any newly-built mental hospital will not be the medical superintendent, nor the secretary of the committee, nor yet the matron, but the chaplain. Not only that but many people, lay and medical, have laid down rules of conduct for medical superintendents, lay administrative officers and nursing officers, but nobody, to my knowledge, has ever laid down any rules of any kind for a hospital chaplain, and that to me signifies that there is a universal feeling that a chaplain in a mental hospital needs to be given a very free hand in directing his energies. A Few Statistics **