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Julius Rosenwald Fund Aids Pay Clinic for Mental Hygiene. To help bring psychiatric service, one of the most expensive forms of medical care, within the reach of people of moderate means is the purpose of a grant recently made by the Julius Rosenwald Fund to aid the Mental Hygiene Institute of the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, according to an announcement from Chicago in October, 1930, by Mr. Edwin R. Embree, President of the Rosenwald Fund.

“Up to the present time,” said Mr. Embree in making the announcement, “only the well-to-do and the poor have been able to take advantage of this newest branch of medical science—the wealthy through the necessarily expensive private practice of psychiatric specialists, the poor through the free services of the state and general hospitals and the child guidance clinics. For families of moderate means the cost of the skilled service and long-continued treatment often necessary to prevent or cure mental maladjustment has been prohibitive.

“In this country about 400,000 hospital beds, or half of all those in the United States, are now used for mental patients. In other words the hospital provision now required for mental diseases is as great as that for all other forms of illness combined. The annual expense of these patients is more than a quarter of a billion dollars. Experts agree that many of these mental breakdowns might be prevented if the patient could receive early diagnosis and treatment. Yet so far work in this direction has been confined almost entirely to charity patients except for the comparatively small amount of very expensive service available to persons of means.

“We believe that the services now offered by the Institute of Mental Hygiene at the Pennsylvania Hospital, under the direction of Dr. Earl D. Bond, professor at the University of Pennsylvania and ex-president of the American Psychiatric Association, constitute a pioneer effort in this important direction under the highest type of leadership and with e