HEALTH AND DISEASE 34 1 



of the year 1936 there were, in the United States, 469,100 patients in mental 

 hospitals or on visit to hospitals, and during the year following that date 

 150,208 others were admitted. Thus, during that year (1936) well over 

 600,000 people were at some time or other patients in a mental hospital — 

 in other words, one out of about every 150 adults of the general population! 



The investment in mental hospitals in this country is approximately one- 

 half billion dollars, and the annual cost of the maintenance of these institu- 

 tions is about one hundred million. The wreckage of human lives, with 

 the accompanying loss in productivity to the community, and the untold 

 heartaches caused to the families of mental patients, can not be fully esti- 

 mated or expressed in monetary terms. One need only mention, too, the 

 bearing of mental disorder upon dependency and delinquency. There cer- 

 tainly are relationships here which are difficult to evaluate but which are 

 none the less real. To bring the matter somewhat more closely home to 

 the reader, it may be pointed out that it has been estimated from the statistics 

 of the New York mental hospitals that the probabilities are that of all per- 

 sons in New York, at least fifteen years of age or over, one out of every 

 twenty will at some time during his fife be a patient in a mental hospital.^ 



In spite of the vital importance of the topic of mental disorder, there is 

 probably no subject on which more misconceptions of facts are prevalent 

 among the public and even among many educated people. When it is borne 

 in mind that for countless centuries, from the time of Christ or earlier down 

 through the Middle Ages, mental derangement was interpreted as due to 

 demoniac possession, presumably as a punishment for sin, it is perhaps not 

 strange that relics of the medieval attitude still hold over in the form of a 

 disguised fear or hatred or contempt of the mental patient. Many persons 

 even to-day are inclined to look upon the existence of mental disorder in 

 relatives as a "stigma," as something to be kept secret, even though intel- 

 lectually they may recognize that it is simply another manifestation of 

 disease, and no more cause for shame than the occurrence of, let us say, 

 pneumonia. The lot of the mentally ill person has never been a happy one, 

 but for too long a time in man's history and, indeed, even to-day that lot 

 has been and still is being made more unhappy by man's inhumanity to 

 man. 



Institutions for the care of the mentally ill are relatively new things. 

 During the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance these unfortunates were 

 driven out of communities to perish miserably or were executed as witches. 

 The Bethlehem Hospital in London was founded probably in the thirteenth 

 century and has had a continuous history since that time, but for centuries 

 after its opening stood alone as an "asylum" for these unfortunates. Paren- 

 thetically, it may be noted that the word "bedlam" is a corruption of 

 Bethlehem, the name of this hospital. One can well imagine the reasons why 



1 A convenient synopsis of the statistics and their interpretation is to be found in the 

 recent volume of Landis and Page entitled Modern Society and Mental Disease. 



