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Show ' "Y ' ; . - tt TXL TELL YOU one thing," said Mrs. X, "a lot our mental-illne- ss problems would be cleared up if the hospitals would stop discharging sick people right and left There ought to be a law requiring them to keep a patient until he's fully JL of recovered." "Fully ?" I asked. "You mean until he's in full contact with reality?" "Well, I should hope so!" said Mrs. X. "No, what J .v.: A native of Indiana who now lives in Evanston, lll Mary Jan Ward ha written many short ttorias and articlas, as wall as tii'novals the n of which js "Tha Snala Pit." This autobiographical story of a woman's struggle back to sanity was published in 17 countries motion and made into a her Today, through writings and ec- btit-know- prize-winni- - pic-tur- e. ng Association for Mental Health and a director of tho Illinois Society for Mental Health, Miss Ward is helping arouse Americans to the seriousness of "the mental health problem. FAMILY WEEKLY MAGAZINE $EfTCMItt,l2, " ...... - & . Despite tremendous advances in medical therapy, the public's failure to cooperate has handicapped the ' r J4 ' I meant was that these people shouldn't be until they can resume normal activity. I've seen case after case . . Whether she realized I was what she would have called a premature discharge from a mental hospital, I do not know. I. had no chance to submit my re-leas- ed history to her.' Like so many of the lay practitioners of psychiatry and psychology, Mrs. X is careful to avoid woixls like "insane" n professionally-frowned-upoor "asylum." But her vocabulary is nothing more than a synthetic effort to modernize an old wives' tale. What the woman seeks isn't legislation for better mental hospitals; she wants bigger custodial-care institutions or, to put it simply, the return of the old insane asylums. The function of the modern mental hospital is to provide curative therapy for mental illness. This therapy includes education on how to adjust to the normal world; but as even Mrs. X must know, circumno hospital tan simulate the normal-lif- e stances to which each of its recovering patients returns. In mental illness as in any major disease, the final steps toward complete recovery must be taken outside the hospitalThe only "thing unique about the convalescence' required for total re- co very from mental illness is the general public's reluctance to "recognize its own'important role in the process. While Mrs. X told about "case after case where the hospitals had no business letting patients go," I wondered if some of the eccentricities she scribed, would have, .alarmed her or. even caught her attention in the behavior of, individuals not tagged as former mental patients. As a former mental patient 1 couldn't help wondering what her reaction would be if I "suddenly began to imitate her conversational temper tantrum. t; ' . The ranks of the fearful and ignorant working against the interests of persons who are or. have been afflicted with mental illness have thinned, but there are still enough of these obstructionists to handicap mentaUhealth education. Mrs. X and her colleagues not only impede rehabilitation proj ects, they also block efforts to establish treatment centers where occurrence and recurrence of mentall illness can be prevented. But they constitute a most vulnerable lobby, whose power will vanish as soon as most of our citizens decide to give itiore than lip ' service to the conviction that mental illness can be cured. Six hundred and fifty thousand Americans an in mental hospitals. It is estimated that this num ber, accounting for 48 percent of the country's total hospital population, would be increased by 350,000 if beds were available for everyone needing hospital care for mental disease. How do we interpret the figures indicating that one out of every 12 of us spends a part of hislife in a mental hospital? The man who has abandoned hope for the survival of our civilization cites mental-illne- ss statistics' to support his pessimism. He grants that medical science has developed curative and preventive therapies for some mental afflictions', but he believes these cost too much in time and money to help more than a small fraction ' of those needing help. Another extremist denies that there has been an actual increase in mental illness'.; He says the population over doubling of the mental-hospit- al 25 is a result of shifting natural the; past years opinion Correctly he points out that we have no figures on how many mentally-i- ll persons formerly were cared for at home or in jails. But he admits having no factual evidence for his contention that the percentage remains constant through the ages. . |