Adjusting Our Lives

Dr. Frank’s articles appear in this space every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The growing complexity of modern industrial society has led social scientists to formulate a consistent theory of maladjustment. The serious effects of these most unfortunate results of industrialism and urbanization are borne out by disturbing statistics of nervous disease and insanity. Therefore, the strengthening and enlarging of all types of psychiatric service is one of our foremost needs.

The impact of the disturbing forces of our new civilization must affect the Jewish people even more than their neighbors, because of the peculiar Jewish makeup growing out of centuries of persecution, maladjustment and urban life. The predisposition to nervous disturbances has increased during the long depression as a consequence of the intensity of economic and social problems, and of the letdown in the morale in the wake of unsettlement and business trouble.

The increasing burden of support of Jewish insane has now and then been used as an argument for suppression of Jewish immigration. As a matter of fact, the Jews of America have not built their own insane asylums. Indeed, the problem of social control of the mentally deficient is too vast to be dealt with, in all its aspects, solely by a small minority group.

Few people in America are familiar with the appalling fact that nearly five per cent of all American babies at birth have the prospect of becoming so mentally diseased in adult life as to require admission to some institution. On the average, approximately one person out of twenty-two becomes a patient for mental disease during the life of a generation. They rise gradually with the age from 13 to about 60 years, and thereafter increase rapidly three to four-fold.

The rates for foreign-born men and women are considerably higher than those for native Americans under 60 years of age. All the same, no reflection is cast upon the foreign-born by these statistics. As all competent and objective students of the problem explain, these higher adjustments incident to a life in a new and unfamiliar environment, in which the struggle for existence for the newcomer is sometimes made unbearably hard.

In a few words, mental maladjustment is a consequence of the way of life, in a large number of deplorable cases, rather than an outcome of racial inferiority.

NEW FIELD OF SOCIAL SERVICE

Feeble-mindedness is seldom an individual misfortune. It affects group life and the community at large in a vastly greater measure than physical disease. Take the case of the straightening out of the snarls caused in family life, so frequently, by a feeble-minded person. This unfortunate human being has virtually been forgotten until he or she got into trouble. With enlightened people, facts of this kind have gone a long way to drive the argument home as to the importance of building up community supervision over the mentally ill.

Up until the last few years this consideration has been the least developed aspect of mental-deficiency work.

Here, as in many other fields of the new philanthropy and social work, the door is wide open to cooperationd and coordination between private charity work and state welfare activities. A corps of state field agents, experts in the mental deficiency and hygiene problems, and closely in touch with state asylums, public schools and courts, should be able to render valuable assistance to the social worker and the community in adjusting this or that case in which mental disease or serious disorder is involved.

VOCATIONAL ADJUSTMENT

A Vocational Adjustment Bureau was established in New York as a privately supported, non-sectarian welfare agency in 1919. Its purpose is to place in suitable gainful employment women and girls, from 14 to 30 years of age, who are handicapped by reason of mental deficiency, personality problems or delinquency. This, needless to add, is a noteworthy demonstration of the necessity and possibilities of community supervision with special reference to industrial placement.

Such service as this is urgently needed for boys also, and the Welfare Council of New York, the central body of all private welfare agencies, in cooperation with the Vocational Adjustment Bureau, has recently appointed a committee for the organization and establishment of a Vocational Adjustment Bureau for boys.

NEED FOR TRAINED WORKERS

Now, all these considerations about the growing place of Mental Hygiene in our community life point unmistakingly to an increased demand for trained workers in this special field.

The group of occupations which consist in specialized and individualized study of people—particularly psychology, clinical and vocational; psychiatry; and psychiatric social case work—evidences, accordingly, a trend toward increased future demand.

Closely related to this trend is also the tendency to find more opportunities for work in various guidance fields, such as child guidance, vocational guidance and industrial personnel work.

Recent progress of medical and social sciences has yielded a better knowledge of human conduct, a new understanding of personal adjustment problems. It is a duty of community-conscious American Jewry to employ the gains made by the sciences of human nature for the benefit of the needy and suffering in our midst.

Dr. Frank’s articles appear in this space every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.Make a habit of glancing through the classified advertising columns. They may have a surprise in store for you.