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How to Overcome
EMOTIONAL STRESS
Almost everybody
suffers from
occasional emotional
stress.
Fears,
neuroses,
anxieties, insecurity, worries, compulsions
are all commonplace today. WHY? What
1
S
the CAUSE?
What is the
secret of sound
emotional control?
T IFE
should be worth living. Yet
L
the feeling that life is not worth
living "is the most challenging
problem that confronts the modero
physician," said Dr. Frank
J.
Ayd, Jr.,
chief of psychiatry at the Franklin
Square Hospital in Baltimore.
Of all the ills to whlch man often
succumbs,
depression
is one of the most
common.
Fears, Anxieries
?
Are you or members of your family
bothered by neuroses, fears, anxieties,
con
ti
nual depression? How emotionally
balanced and healthy is your family?
If
you live in a modero city, then
take note: A study checking on the
mental health of city folks discovered
that only 18.5 percent of them are com–
pletely well mentally! The findings are
part of a community health study in a
midtown area of New York Hospital
and Cornell University Medical College.
Psychiatrists classified 23.4 percent
of those studied as being mentally
impaired to the extent their illness
interfered with lífe functions. Another
21.8 percent had moderate symptoms of
mental illness. The largest percentage
- 36.3 percent - had mild symptoms
of mental disorder.
If
you live in a noisy, crowded,
tension-packed
city
environment, then -
according to this study - your statis–
tio.l chances of being emotionally and
by
William F. Dankenbring
mentally
sound
are only about one m
five!
People in the country, however, have
been found to experience the same
symptoms of mental illness as city dwel–
lers - and in the same proportion. The
worst areas in the country were the
economically depressed "country slums."
Thls study was also conducted by
Cornell University researchers.
Children
Hit
Perhaps the most serious mental ill–
ness problem today involves
children.
A
Senate study a few years ago reported
that
four and a half milliorz
American
children need psychiatric treatment. The
report asserted that one American chlld
out of 10, from 5 to
17
years old,
showed signs of odd behavior. Said
Senator Thomas J. Dodd, many of our
juvenile delinquents come from this dis–
turbed group.
Compared with a decade ago,
THREE
TIMES
as many children 14 and under
are being admitted to mental hospitals
annually. And the suicide rate among
teen-agers is up sharply. In the past
decade, the suicide cate in the United
States has risen, especially among the
15- to 19-year-old group where it has
increased nearly 50
percent.l
These figures are indeed tragic. They
reveal a story of what is happening to
our yol!th - our nation's number one
resourcel
Said Dr. Edwin Shneidman of Los
Angeles, special consultant to the
National Institute of Mental Health:
"We are tormented because we say,
'Here is a person who is about to enter
the externa! potential of life and yet
because of interna! conAict takes his
own life.'"
A recent study conducted by Dr.
Thomas S. Langner revealed that twelve
percent of Manhattan's children are
seriously mentally disturbed, "tbe kind
of kids that Lee Harvey Oswald and
Sirhan Sirhan were." The 5-year study
sampled 1,034 of the city's children
between ages 6 and 8.
Only
twelve percent
of the children
were found to be mentally healthy, oc
as the study pointed out, minimally
impaired.
Are college students also affected?
Indeed they are. An estimated
lO
per–
cent of all college students already are
seeking psychiatric help, said a Harvard
psychiatrist. Declared Dr. Dana Farns–
worth: "There is something happening
at our institutions increasing emotional
conflict and psychosis among college
students."
But why are so many of us emo–
tionally handicapped or mentally ill
today? What are the
e
aliJes
of mental
illness? What can be done about this
terrible scourge of emotional problems
that affiicts over 20,000,000 Americans