The Problem of Mental Disorder

stantly discovering new measures and medicaments for preventing and relieving many of the graver ills of the body, no like agency is successfully coping with the mentally disordered in public and private institutions for the insane and in the open life of the community. They realised that nearly every hospitalised patient means a disturbed and disorganised family and were conscious of the magnitude of the problem, since the number of mentally disturbed and ungoverned outside the hospitals probably exceeds that of the hospitalised cases. There is a vast army of mental sufferers under the care of physicians and psychoanalysts, and also under faith-healers, magicians, quacks, astrologers, mystics, and the like. The problem of mental disorder not only includes those who are insane, but also the queer, the vagrant, the flighty, the incorrigible, the suspicious, the irascible, the unstable, and reclusive people. All these are individuals who, because of defective selfdirection and of unbalanced performance, are more or less incapacitated for effective living in society. It was therefore decided that a genera approach might be made by undertaking an inventory of the scientific support which ma>