218 RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



URBAN AND RURAL INSANITY * 



IN general the statistics indicate that there is relatively more 

 insanity in cities than in country districts and in large cities 

 than in small cities, although to some extent the difference may 

 be accounted for by difference between city and country as re- 

 gards the tendency to place cases of insanity under institutional 

 care. The figures may also be affected in some degree by the 

 accident of the location of the hospitals for the insane. Studies 

 made in New York State show that the proportion of admissions 

 from a county in which a hospital is located is always greater 

 than from other counties and that the proportion decreases with 

 the distance from the hospital. The influence of this factor 

 upon the comparison between city and country, however, would 

 not everywhere be uniform. Whether it tended to increase the 

 ratio of admissions from country districts or that from city dis- 

 tricts would depend entirely upon the location of the hospitals. 

 Probably it does not go very far toward explaining the higher 

 ratio of admissions from the urban population. 



The ratio of admission to hospitals for the insane is higher 

 for urban than for rural communities for both males and fe- 

 males, and the difference is about as marked for one sex as for 

 the other. It follows that the difference between the sexes with 

 regard to this ratio is about as marked in urban communities 

 as it is in rural, the one statement being a corollary of the other. 



One difficulty, however, about all comparisons of this kind as 

 applied to the United States as a whole is that the urban popula- 

 tion and the rural are very differently distributed over the ter- 

 ritory of the United States. New England and the Middle At- 

 lantic divisions together include 45 per cent, of the total urban 

 population of the United States, as compared with only 13.5 per 

 cent, of the rural population. If to these two divisions is added 

 the East North Central the combined area includes 67.6 per cent., 

 or about two-thirds, of the urban population, but only 31 per 

 cent., or less than one-third, of the rural population. The three 

 southern divisions, on the other hand, contain a much smaller 



i Adapted from "Insane and Feeble-minded in Institutions, 1910." 

 Dept. of Commerce, U. S. Bur. of Census, pp. 49-51. Published 1914. 



