Most psychiatrists' reports are woven around the tortured braggings of a paranoiac, the sullen stupors of a schizophrenic. Few ever bother with such broader problems as the relation of insanity to unemployment, to age, to sex, to alcohol. And no one has seriously answered the crucial questions: Is insanity in the U. S. increasing, and if so, why?
During the past twelve years, Psychiatrist Neil Avon Dayton of Boston's Tufts College, with a grant of $140,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation, has run these questions down. With 24 social workers, he dug into the records of 89,000 mental patients who had passed...