Was Insanity on the Increase?

At the autumn meeting of the Medico-psychological Association in 1871, Maudsley—that time President of the Association—reada paper entitled 'In Issanity on the Increase?. The question was then one of profound concern both to the British public and to psychiatrists. Not only had there been for years a constant need to build new asylums—a cause ‘of terrible discouragement and complaint with the ratepayers’ (Arlidge, 1859)—but also, as was clearly apparent in the publications of the Poor Law Office and the Annual Reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy, the number of the registered insane was increasing every year, far out of proportion to the increase in the population (see Fig 1). This circum stance, it was said, ‘miwghetll give rise to alarming apprehension of a mental degeneracy’ in the country (Arlidge, 1862).