Neuroses Out of Town

Are country people calmer, saner, more law-abiding and "better adjusted" than city folks? Back-to-nature enthusiasts, who like to think so, had reason last week to think again. A recent case study of a typical Ohio rural county found that country people, in spite of their slower-paced living, are just as frustrated, neurotic and generally queer as anybody else--perhaps more so.

The investigators, Ohio mental health officials and some Ohio State University professors, chose Miami County (pop. 52,600), north of Dayton, an area of farms, villages and three small towns (biggest: Piqua, pop. 16,000). They examined its schoolchildren, draft data, court records. Findings:

P: From 10 to 20% of the county's residents ought to see a psychiatrist.

P: "Many . . . live miserably, and at a level far below their real capacity for effective and efficient functioning. . . ."

P: In the past six years, 207 had been committed to institutions; one out of every 23 inhabitants of the county would spend part of his life in a mental institution.

P: More than 10% of its draft-age men were mentally unfit for military service. (Farm boys generally were less mentally fit than city boys.)

P: One elementary school child in five was "seriously maladjusted"; in six years 1,168 cases of delinquency had come up in court. In the lower grades, rural moppets had better-than-average mental health; but by the time they reached the sixth grade, their neuroses were showing.

P: The divorce rate was almost 75% above the national average (6.2 per 1,000 population v. 3.6 per 1,000 in the U.S. as a whole).

P: Neuroses were much more common among the poor and ill-educated than among the well-educated; the insanity rate was about the same in both of these groups.

P: Unlike village and city people, isolated farm families often harbored and hid a psychotic to avoid his commitment to an institution.

How come? And are all rural communities as bad as Miami County?* The investigators were not prepared to say, suggested further study. They thought that poor rural schools might be one big cause.

* The state of Ohio is a favorite yardstick of pollsters. Says George Gallup: almost any county in Ohio is likely to be representative of communities of similar composition in the U.S. as a whole.

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