Transcriber's Note: Punctuation and possible typographical errors have been changed. Archaic and variable spelling have been preserved. Footnotes appear at the end of the text, after the Index. Cover image created by the transcriber and placed in the public domain. MENTAL DISEASES _A Public Health Problem_ BY JAMES V. MAY, M.D. Superintendent, Boston State Hospital, Boston, Mass.; Fellow, and Chairman of the Committee on Statistics, of the American Psychiatric Association; Fellow of the American Medical Association, etc. Formerly, Superintendent, Grafton State Hospital, North Grafton, Mass.; Medical Member, The New York State Hospital Commission, Albany, N. Y.; and Superintendent, Matteawan State Hospital, Beacon, N. Y. WITH A PREFACE BY THOMAS W. SALMON, M.D. Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University; Medical Advisor to the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, New York City [Illustration] BOSTON RICHARD G. BADGER THE GORHAM PRESS COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY RICHARD G. BADGER All Rights Reserved Made in the United States of America The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A. PREFACE Interest in mental disorders is no longer confined to the relatively small number of persons whose duties or family ties bring them into daily contact with the mentally ill. Disorders that so profoundly affect human conduct were certain, sooner or later, to attract the attention of those who are interested in the study of human behavior in its broadest relations or who have special responsibilities with reference to the conduct of individuals and require all the information that they can secure on factors that modify the reactions of men, women or children in the social environments in which they live and die. Uncertain of themselves until they made sure of the sciences upon which their future work was to develop, social workers since the commencement of organized social work in this country demanded of the sciences concerned with the human mind some information that might aid them in dealing with the difficult problems in human adaptation which they found constituted the chief part of social work. Judges and those who are interested in penology have within recent years turned also to the students of abnormal human behavior for light upon problems of crime and delinquency. With mental hygiene becoming firmly established as a practical field of preventive medicine, another group of persons not directly concerned with the care of the mentally ill has become deeply interested in the forms, types and causes of mental illness. It is by such readers, quite as much as physicians, medical students and nurses, that Dr. May's work in bringing together the main facts regarding mental diseases and the people who suffer from them will be appreciated. For those whose interest in the subject is incidental