The Skid Row Problem

IT is the aim of this paper to discuss psychiatric observations made over a three-year period of 101 destitute and homeless alcoholic men, a group hitherto inaccessible to such exploration. The rehabilitation program1 of the Long Island Hospital of Boston, Massachusetts, afforded a psychiatric and medical team the opportunity to study these men both in and out of the hospital.That such a group of men, coming from the Skid Row section of the city, represents the most debilitated type of alcoholic patient is a matter of common observation, although Straus and McCarthy2 differentiate such patients from the true addictive . . .