Action for Mental Health: Final Report, 1961

Providing for an objective, thorough, and nationwide analysis and reevaluation of the human and economic problems of mental illness, and for other purposes.

Whereas some seven hundred and fifty thousand mentally ill and retarded patients are now being hospitalized on any given day, and

Whereas 47 per centum of the hospital beds in the Nation are occupied by mental patients; and

Whereas the direct economic cost of mental illness to the taxpayers of the Nation, including pensions to veterans with psychiatric disabilities, is over $I,000,000,000 a year and has been increasing at a rate of $I00,000,000 a year; and

Whereas the emotional impact and distress suffered by millions of our people anxiously and justifiably concerned about the welfare, treatment, and prospects of mentally afflicted relatives is incalculable and is one of the most urgent concerns of our people; and

Whereas the Governors of the several States, through national and regional Governors Conferences and through the publications of the Council of State Governments, have shown great initiative in their cooperative attempts to develop better methods of meeting the challenge of mental illness in their States; and

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