Lexington Dispatch North Carolina has in hospitals for the mentally diseased only 139.3 persons for every 100,000. The average for the United States is 245 per 100,000. New Hampshire, Maryland, California, Oregon, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Vermont, New York and Massachusetts range from 313.5 to 399 per 100,000.
These figures were compiled by the department of the University of North Carolina from Federal government records. The opinion is voiced by the Federal authorities that “the rate of mentally diseased in hospitals is more nearly an index of facilities for the care and treatment of the mentally ill than an index of mental illness itself.”
With this statement this paper cannot altogether agree. It is not observed that there has been in the past few years been any serious difficulty in finding room in state and private hospitals for those who are mentally diseased. There are in a number of hospitals and sanitariums in North Carolina a large number of patients from other states. These are more than the number of North Carolina patients in such hospitals outside the state, it is believed.
There is considerable evidence to support the belief that conditions in North Carolina are most conducive to sanity and that it is more responsible for the small umber under treatment than any other factor, “authorities” to the contrary, notwithstanding.
From page 2 of the Cleveland Star, Shelby, N.C., Monday, August 2, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn97064509/1926-08-02/ed-1/seq-2/
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