OVERCROWDING.—Each succeeding year there is a greater number of patients resident in State hospitals. There is a constantly increasing number of beds provided to care for these patients, but at no time has the nnmber of beds been sufficient to furnish adequate facilities for all patients. As soon as additional construction is undertaken, there is a greater influx of patients than the constrnction was intended to accommodate. Consequently there is almost always a certain amount of overcrowding in most State hospitals. It is preferable to express this overcrowding in relation to figures of rated capacity, rather than to numbers of beds, for beds can be crowded into space never intended to hold them. Many hospitals contain one-bed rooms, spaciously constrncted, and as a result, are made to hold two or three beds. Day-rooms have been provided in construction plans so that patients may move about unhampered; when it becomes necessary to use these rooms at night for beds, which are crowded into the corners as best they can be by day, a patient's freedom becomes cramped. Few persons enjoy such enforced proximity at all times to their fellows.
Over the period 1926 through 1938 there has not been great change in the degree of overcrowd1ng, but it has varied slightly above and below 10 percent. This may, in some hospitals, not be too great an excess, but in others it evokes serious problems of administration and makes adequate therapeutic care of patients difficult.
TABLE 44.—AVERAGE PATIENT POPULATION AND NORMAL CAPACITY OF STATE HOSPITALS
FOR MENTAL DISEASES: 1926-1938
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YEAR
Average daily resident patient population
Normal capacity of hospitals
EXCESS OF POPULATION OVER CAPACITY
Number
Percent
1938 381,708 348,809 32,899 9.4
1937 369,489 333,237 36,252 10.9
1936 358,429 321,708 36,721 11.4
1935 347,620 312,158 35,462 11.4
1934 336,637 302,759 33,878 11.2
1933 327,812 295,703 32,109 10.9
1932 307,939 279,807 28,132 10.1
1931 296,700 270,585 26,115 9.7
1930 278,829 247,407 31,422 11.7
1929 269,892 244,599 25,293 10.3
1928 264,072 239,471 24,601 10.3
1927 256,009 232,572 23,437 10.1
1926 248,852 232,321 16,531 7.1
There was apparently hospital construction in certain of the States during 1938. Rhode Island, New Jersey, Michigan, Missouri, South Carolina, Alabama, and California show large decreases in the proportion of overcrowding from the previous year.
Similarly, there are a number of States whose degree of overcrowding has increased seriously in that 1-year period. The greatest overcrowding is recorded in Iowa, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, and Colorado.
