Mental Hygiene Authority of Victoria
In 1952, Dax emigrated to Melbourne, Australia to take up an appointment as founding Chairman of the Mental Hygiene Authority of Victoria (later known as the Mental Health Authority). The Authority was formed as a response to public concern about the treatment and welfare of psychiatric patients, and particularly as a response to the Kennedy Report of 1950 which highlighted the plight of these patients in Victoria in the immediate post war era. Dax remained in this position until 1968, introducing major reforms of mental health services. These included the moving of psychiatric treatment from asylums to community settings and the introduction of art programs for patients. In 1961, the World Federation for Mental Health sponsored the publication of Dax's book Asylum To Community, which describes the rapid expansion of community psychiatric centres in Australia. In his introduction to this book the Federation's Chairman, John Rawlings Rees, praised Dax's Mental Hygiene Authority as 'a major training ground in psychiatry and mental health work for all the English-speaking populations of the South-western Pacific region'. However, abuse of psychiatric patients was still occurring at such institutions as Newhaven Hospital.
As part of his general strategy to expand psychiatric services, the teaching of psychiatry and the education of doctors in psychiatric principles, Dax lobbied for the creation of a chair of Psychiatry at the University of Melbourne; this was achieved in 1963. He supported the establishment of the Parkville Psychiatric Unit as a teaching unit of the University.
Although health services in Australia were funded and administered at state level, Dax advocated federal intervention to coordinate and further resource psychiatric services.
Read more about this topic: Eric Cunningham Dax
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