PATIENTS IN MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, 1938
INTRODUCTION
PREVIOUS ENUMERATIONS.—Enumeration of persons with mental disease and with mental deficiency was undertaken for the first time in the population census of 1850. This practice, carried on decennially through 1890, counted persons both hospitalized and unhospitalized directly on the population schedule. Obviously such information has difficult of access. Severe under-enumeration of mental patients resulted from the 1850, 1860, and 1870 censuses. As a result the census schedules were supplemented in 1860 with a series of questionnaires mailed to 100,000 physicians in the United States. This practice, however, was abandoned in 1890 end the schedule method alone was used in that year.
In 1900 and in 1910 a census of hospitalized patients was conducted. Subsequently the groundwork for uniform Nation-wide statistics was laid by The National Committee for Mental Hygiene and several censuses were undertaken by that organisation.
In 1923 the Bureau of the Census again conducted its decennial count. That year was the first that the Bureau of the Census utilized in its reports the standard classification of nomenclature of mental diseases as recommended by the American Psychiatric Association and the classification of mental defectives as adopted by the American Association on Mental Deficiency (then known as the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded).
From that enumeration on the reports assumed a clinical aspect. The 1923 reports achieved coverage of hospitals for mental disease under all types of control. State, county, city, private, and veterans', and of patients in the psychiatric wards of general hospitals as well. Mental defectives and epileptics in State, city, and private institutions were reported. Such complete coverage was not again secured until 1933, although annually since 1931 patients in all types of mental hospitals and institutions with the exception of mental patients in general hospitals have been enumerated. The present census is the thirteenth of the annual enumerations begun in 1926.
This report was prepared by Grace C. Scholz, Chief of the Mental Institutions Unit, under the supervision of Halbert L. Dunn. M. D., Chief Statistician for Vital Statistics; John Collinson, M. D., Assistant Chief Statistician for Vital Statistics; and C. C. Van Vechten, Ph. D., Chief of the Institutional Statistics Section.
ARRANGEMENT OF THE REPORT.—This report is the first which combines the separate reports "Patients in Hospitals for Mental Disease' and Mental Defectives and Epileptics in Institutions." The first of these previously separate publications comprises part I of this report, the second, part II, in part III is presented combined data on mental defectives and epileptics under treatment both in hospitals for mental disease and in institutions for mental defect and epilepsy. In certain sections of the country the proportions of these patients in hospitals for mental disease is large and only by combination of the data can adequate interstate comparison be drawn.
PERIOD COVERED—The data reporting the patient population of the institution cover either the calendar year or the fiscal year which ends during that calendar year. Most State institutions find it more convenient to utilise the fiscal year since their data are customarily compiled for their own reports on this basis. Financial data always cover the fiscal year.
