Notes

The Council of the AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION has launched a campaign to correct conditions in State Hospitals. The membership of the Association is urged in a circular letter to inform the 'people of the country' who are the only ones 'who hold the means of solution of this problem'.

'For more than a century the membership of the American Psychiatric Association has been deeply interested in winning for the mentally ill of the United States and Canada the best possible care and treatment.'

'Scandalous conditions have come to light …' recently and have been brought to the attention of the public by courageous and determined individual s through the medium of books and the lay press.

It is hoped that such exposures will continue until all hospitals for the mentally sick everywhere are continuously operated in accordance with the most civilized, scientific and humane standards. That the energy for this effort has to be multiplied in this country by forty-eight—once for each legislature that controls the welfare of the mentally sick patients in the hospitals of its State—is an unfortunate and anachronistic reality.

To the members of the American Psychiatric Association, its president, Samuel W. Hamilton, M.D., has written in part: 'The Association at its meeting in Chicago congratulated the large body of faithful, earnest workers who continue to struggle—against enormous odds—to provide even a decent measure of kindly care to the mentally ill in the poorer public institutions, to say nothing of scientific treatment. The Association urged these devoted men and women to keep up their courage and assert the need of necessary resources and facilities that only the State Legislatures can provide. The Council of the Association went on record as ready to support any medical superintendent who acts to inform the public of his patients' needs, and every member of the Association is urged to arouse the public conscience in his own area.'