Ataractic Success

If the talk-it-out method of treating mental illness is hard to apply on a big scale, the take-a-pill method, in conjunction with psychotherapy, is doing fine. At meetings of the American Psychiatric Association in Chicago, held separately from the psychoanalysts', 2,000 psychiatrists last week heard that since New York began intensive drug treatment with ataractics in 1956. the number of patients in its state mental hospitals has dropped by more than 4,000 (despite a 500,000 population spurt). Admissions, including readmissions, are up 5,000 a year, but discharges are up by 8,000. Dr. Henry Brill predicted that New York's mental-hospital population would drop another 5,000, perhaps even 15,000, by 1970--which only six years ago would have been regarded as "a flight of irresponsible optimism." But no one regards the discharged patients as all totally cured: most need and get follow-up treatment as outpatients.

Discharge figures for all the states, though not all as up-to-date as New York's, are similarly encouraging. Dr. Robert H. Feliz. president of the American Psychiatric Association, reported a 4.2% drop in the number of patients in the whole U.S., to 535,000 since 1955.

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