A National Disgrace.

During the 1950s it was calculated that one family in three would admit a member to a mental institution. By 1959 on an average day some eight hundred thousand Americans were in mental hospitals, and many of them would never leave. Yet in 1955 there were only some forty-seven hundred fully certified psychiatrists in the United States, and only five hundred new psychiatrists were being trained each year. In a decade of enthusiastic spending for medical research, mental health was shorted. Cancer, which afflicted about 16 percent fewer people than mental health, attracted more than 400 percent more research money. As a result, many mental institutions became little more than overcrowded warehouses where tormented people waited to die.

Columbus State Hospital.

In October and November 1956 The Saturday Evening Post ran a six-part series on mental hospitals that focused attention on one that seemed to be...