We Americans cannot justly be proud of the way we have dealt with our nation's most important health problem. Mental disorders affect more of us than cancer, tuberculosis and infantile paralysis combined. Severe mental illness fills forty-five percent of all hospital beds in the country with its victims. Yet most of us have been sadly unaware of its extent, falsely confident that adequate care is generally available, and blindly indifferent to its disastrous effects, both social and economic, upon our national life.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Frank L. Wright, Jr.