Develop. Med. Child Neurol. 1964, 6, 203

Mental Health Research Fund Projects

CREATED in 1949 to further research into all kinds of mental disorder, the Mental Health Research Fund has so far financed, or helped to finance, some seventeen projects related to the diseases of childhood and adolescence. A great many others deal indirectly with disorders at these ages.

Among these projects, all of which have to be assessed and approved by the Fund’s Research Committee, was an important study of 100 cases of childhood psychosis. Two typical cases were found at autopsy to have a totally unsuspected cerebral 1ipidosis.l There was a high incidence of epilepsy in the group (12 cases), and only 17 of the 100 children were living an ordinary life. Examination of the home background and relationships did not support a theory implicating parental personalities or child-rearing patterns.2

An experimental survey of the effects of institution eiivironment on imbecile children suggested that long residence in such places retarded verbal more than non-verbal intelligence and that mongols were more at risk in this respect than non- mongols. Mongol children in day schools were on average a year more advanced verbally than those in institutions3. T I Z A R D ~ has shown how greatly the mental development of backward children can be influenced by changes in their management.

Studying a differently handicapped group, GOMULICKIS noted that at the age of 5 years blind children were at a definite disadvantage in perceptual development

compared with normals, but that the blind child progressed faster from then on and caught up in 4 to 10 years. Recommenda- tions for training techniques will be made later.

CRAFT’ has completed a number of studies of adolescent psychopaths, dealing with causes, classification, treatment and follow-up, and there have been some important autopsy studies, mostly from the Fountain Hospital, London. DRILLIEN’ reported on the numerous and varied problems of 50 children weighing under 3 Ib . a t b i r t h . F i n a l l y t h e r e w e r e MARGERISON’S~ surveys of temporal lobe epilepsy in hospital populations; this condition was found in less than 60 per cent of a long-stay epileptic population and high-grade mental defectives with epilepsy, but was rarer in lower grade defectives. Other projects are still in progress or being written up.

With a maximum annual budget of f30,000 for grant-giving, the Mental Health Research Fund has now allocated nearly a quarter of a million pounds in ten years. The seventeen projects related to children have so far cost f50,000. The Fund’s finances have now reached a critical state, owing to the drying up of Govern- ment support for research and the ending of annual grants from some charitable foundations. The Fund entirely depends on voluntary support, and its present need is great-as are the needs of psychiatric research as a whole. RICHARD Fox

I . Creak, E. M. Brit. f. Psychiat. 1963, 109, 84. 2. - 3. Lyle, J. G. J . ment. Def. Res. 1959, 3, 122. 4. Tizard, J. Brit. nwd. J . . 1960, i, 104. 5. Gomulicki, B. R. Th: Psychology Laboratory London: Cambridge University Press, 1961.

6. Craft, M. In the press. 7. Drillien, C, M. Pediatrics, 1961, 27, 452. 8. Margerison, J. H. J . ment. Sci. 1961.107,902.

Ini, S . ChildPsychol. fsvclriar. 1960, 1, 156.

203