The value of organized social service in connection with the clinic for mental diseases has been strikingly shown since its recent establishment at the Boston Dispensary. In the department for mental diseases in this institution, which is a large and long-established dispensary taking all classes of diseases, a trained social worker was set at work in January, 1912. At the expiration of a year an efficiency test was made, comparing the clinic during 1911, when the medical staff had no social worker to assist them, with 1912, when she was at their service. The following table summarizes this test: Increase 1911 1912 Per Cent New Patients 125 213 70 Old Patients no record 100 -- Visits by New Patients 388 909 134 Visits by All Patients 516 1568 203 Cured or Substantially Improved 19% 22% 16 Cases Pending at End of Year[8] 2% 22% 1000 Transferred to Other Agencies 16% 49% 206 Patients Lost 27% 5.6% 90[9] Relative Efficiency 43% 94% 118 [8] The increase of "cases pending" is due to the organized medical and social follow-up work, whereby the patients are held at the clinic until the physician feels that they may safely be discharged. Without this service the cases do not "pend" because they are lost. [9] Decrease. The gist of these statistics is that, with the aid of a trained social worker, it is possible to treat certain forms of mental disease effectively in an out-patient clinic. The physician becomes able to keep a grip upon all patients that he wants to hold. There is practically a closed circle, and the results of treatment bear favorable comparison with private work. It is not too much to say that such a clinic, provided with a staff of interested mental specialists and with trained social workers, can perform an important function in treating mental disease and preventing its spread in the community.[10] [10] The preventive work of the clinic takes place in two ways: first, by diagnosing cases of mental defect that ought to have institutional care, and in securing this care for them by placing them or inducing their families to consent to place them in the proper Institution; second, by the education of patients and their families in habits of life and principles of mental hygiene which establish a home environment favorable to the preservation of mental health.