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Many Lose Their Chance. A few of the mentally ill are vicious, says Deutsch, "but most patients are perfectly harmless folk. They are, if anything, too passive, too frightened, too beaten, too withdrawn. Among them are many of our most sensitive types—people so tender, so delicate, that they could not stand the tough, harsh, brutal reality of modern life and hence wrapped themselves in the protecting cloak of unreality . . . They have committed mental suicide, or tried to ... Nobody knows how many curables have been rendered hopeless by the nightmarish trials of state hospital life."
What can be done about it? The job is too big for anybody's one-man crusade, says Deutsch. He praises the National Mental Health Act (which provides for research, training of personnel and clinics), urges individual action in local communities and the support of groups like the National Committee for Mental Hygiene and the National Mental Health Foundation. His conclusion: "We can, by answering the call of conscience and the dictates of good citizenship, help erase the shame of the states."