Senile Statistics

In Gulliver's Travels, Swift describes the "struldbrugs," the unhappy old men & women who could not die but were "uncapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection . . . The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories."

Year by year in the U.S., there are more & more old people. At 65, the average American white man still has twelve years and eight months to live; the average 65-year-old woman has 14 1/2 years.

More & more U.S. old folks are ending up in mental institutions. In 1922, only 9,229 patients over 65 were admitted to mental hospitals; in 1939, there were 18,227; in 1946 the figure had climbed to 29,987. These statistics look "appalling" to Dr. Riley H. Guthrie, who last week settled into his new job as a special mental hospital consultant to the U.S. Public Health Service.

One reason for the increase is obvious, Dr. Guthrie believes: "As the span of life increases, more people reach the senile period . . . The incidence of illness increases anyway with the aging process, and mental illness is one of them." Another factor is the growth of cities. "City dwellers can't tolerate little aberrations [among members of their families] as well as country people." City life, too, is more complicated for the mentally ill. (A Guthrie example: "A shepherd in Wyoming might be as schizophrenic as can be. He wouldn't last five minutes in Times Square.")

In many cases, thinks Dr. Guthrie, putting oldsters who have slight mental quirks into already crowded mental hospitals is far from the best answer. Besides, some old people now in mental institutions are in good shape compared to some outside. Dr. Guthrie's advice to well-meaning relatives: "As long as an aged person is competent, the best plan of living is his own plan. He will use his past experiences to his own advantage."

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