Rural Problems of Today

by Ernest R. Groves

It is unfortunate that rural people do not realize more often the serious meaning of feeble-mindedness. The close contact between neighbors and the familiarity of community life tend in the country to develop an indifference to the variations from normal standard that the high-grade ament expresses. People, as a rule, take the social failures of the feeble-minded for granted and do not specially regard them as evidences of mental inferiority. This condition makes the limited segregation possible in the country very difficult indeed. The thoughtful parent hardly knows how to keep his child from associating with the deficient child of his neighbor when they live near together and attend the same school.

At school also the feeble-minded child is likely to have advantages over his city brother, which keep him from exhibiting to the full his inherent mental weakness. A conversation with almost any rural teacher will impress upon one the fact that the teacher is loath to declare feeble-minded a child whose records give unmistakable evidence of amentia and that she generally regards the child as merely dull. Fortunately this is likely not to be so true in the future, as a result of the recent instruction that candidates for teaching are now receiving in our normal schools.

There is, however, the greatest need of clinic work being carried on in our rural schools. The problem cannot safely be left with local authority. The demand is for some state-wide method of mental examination of school children. This service, which in most states could be given over to the superintendent of public instruction, ought to be given wider scope than merely the mental measurement of school children. The problem requires the service of the alienist. Only by this more fundamental treatment of the problem can we expect to obtain the full social relief that the preventive side of mental hygiene promises. As a matter of fact, however, it is likely that the problem will be considered first from the viewpoint of retardation in our rural schools. It will be unwise to force the mental hygiene movement into our rural school administration more rapidly than the need of it can be made clear to our rural leadership.

It is an unhappy fact that we are at present doing so little. The state certainly must try in some way to provide, for the country children who need it, the special class instruction now given backward children in the cities. This will give relief by providing a basis for the separation of the curable and the incurable defective children. At present the defective child who requires treatment and improves in the special class suffers a great handicap by being in the country rather than in the city.

Without doubt epilepsy and psychopathic cases, as well as feeble-mindedness, receive relatively less attention in the country than in the city. This situation certainly hinders rural progress and adds to the social burdens of rural communities. Any one familiar with the life of a typical rural town will know of peculiarities of conduct and strange attitudes of non-social persons which indicate mental unsoundness. These abnormalities express themselves in various forms and I happen to know of some New England communities that have been hopelessly separated into two hostile parts as a result of the influence of persons whose subsequent careers have proven that the originators of the difficulties were socially irresponsible. One such case was a church quarrel that finally had to receive a state-wide recognition because of the serious situation that finally resulted. The later suicide of the individual, who first started the dispute, a suicide that had little objective explanation, seems to have demonstrated that the whole difficulty originated because of the influence of a psychopathic character. In this case had the community known a very little about mental aberration the history of the difficulty would have been very different. Even as it was, a very few of the more thoughtful people believed the man insane.

The chief reason, however, for mental hygiene propaganda in the country is the influence it will have in preventing human suffering. The problem of mind health is a humane one and this fact removes the distinction between rural and urban need. Urban fields offer more inducements at present for the worker, but the rural need is also great. The rural districts are less conscious of their distress and perhaps respond less readily to whatever instruction is given them, but they certainly must be given the benefits of the mental hygiene movement by a patient and persistent propaganda.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] "Insane and Feebleminded in Institutions," Washington, D. C., 1914, pp. 50 and 54.

[4] "Mental Status of Rural School Children," by E. H. Mullan, Public Health Reports, Nov. 17, 1916, and "The Mental Status of Rural School Children of Porter County, Indiana," by T. Clark and W. L. Treadway, Public Health Bulletin No. 77.

[5] Amentia is used as a technical term for feeble-mindedness.