2. What should fathers and mothers of the feeble-minded do to help realize that program?
3. How far should social control compel the segregation or sterilization, or both, of those obviously unfit to become parents?
4. What can be done by mental hygiene to lessen the numbers of the insane, the "queer," the weak-willed, and the slow-minded?
5. The consensus of experts seems to indicate that the first need is to segregate in suitable institutions under permanent custodial care all the markedly inferior who cannot be self-supporting and who lack power of self-protection against the grossest forms of exploitation; the second need is to introduce new methods of supervisory control and humane protection and training in the care of those who are not normal but who, under favorable conditions of vocational guidance and direction and with a new home environment suited to their peculiar needs, may become wage-earners and fairly useful members of society. In the town for which you seek better conditions, which of these efforts is most needed at the present time? Is it to meet the needs for institutional care or for supervision adequate and well applied for those left either in their own homes or placed in colony-care?
FOOTNOTES:
[14] See "Mental Diseases in Twelve States," as reported in 1919 by Horatio M. Pollock, Ph.D., Statistician New York State Hospital Commission, and Edith M. Forbush, Statistician of National Committee for Mental Hygiene, published in Mental Hygiene of April, 1921.