Abstract

To paraphrase a well-known advertising slogan-in psychiatric institutions nearly everyone reads MENTAL HOSPITALS. Except the patient. And a week or so ago, my office began thinking about this non-reader-the man the magazine is really about. J ust how many patients, they asked, do not read MENTAL HOSPITALS? It may be unusual for an editor to boast about his non-readership-but MENTAL HOSPITALS is an unusual magazine. Its “non-readership statistics” really tell the story of its usefulness. And because if you don’t tell people, they won’t know, I thought I would share some of the results of the informal survey conducted by my office on this matter of non-readership. Among our 425 member institutions, there are 175 State hospitals or 87% of the national total. These member hospitals serve more than 467,000 patients. Thirty-seven percent of the schools for the mentally defective are members-these schools look after another 55,500 patients. Our seventy-eight private hospitals care for a further 7,000. The Veterans Administration has a 100% plus membership-by “plus” I mean that all their neuropsychiatric hospitals belong to the Service, plus those general medical and surgical hospitals with sizable neuropsychiatric units. This accounts for a further 50,000 patients. General, federal, territorial,