4 FARRERAS
The 1929 Act also established the Narcotics Division within the PHS.
It was to serve four purposes: 1) administering the two narcotic farms;
2) studying drug addiction and its best treatment and rehabilitation;
3) disseminating information on this research and treatment; and
4) providing states with advice on the care, treatment and rehabilita
tion of addicts.^9 The following year, on June 14, 1930, Public Law
71-357^10 moved the Narcotics Division to the Division of Mental
Hygiene and the functions of the new division, headed by physician
Walter L. Treadway, were enlarged to include: 1) providing medical
and psychiatric care in federal penal and correctional institutions; and
2) studying the “etiology, prevalence, and means for the prevention and
treatment of mental and nervous diseases.”^11
Apart from the two narcotic farms, the PHS’s Division of Mental
Hygiene was quite small, but it nonetheless followed a set of principles
that would lead to a national mental health program: the recognition
and treatment of the mentally ill; the investigation of the nature and eti
ology of mental disorders; the training of personnel to work in the field
of mental hygiene; the development of measures to reduce mental illness;
the search for solutions to the economic problems resulting from mental
illness; and the uncovering of the community sources of mental illness.^12
World War II (WWII), however, interrupted the development of
such a national mental health program. The PHS ceased to advise the
states, the Fort Worth narcotic farm began accepting mentally ill patients
from the armed services, and the large number of war discharges and
casualties demonstrated “the tremendous toll mental illness took on
the national welfare.”^13 Mental illness filled more hospital beds than
any other cause: treatment was lengthy; prognoses were pessimistic;
and relapse rates were high.^14 By August 1945, 1.8 million men had been
rejected for service for neuropsychiatric reasons, by far the largest cause
for rejection. Combined with mental and educational deficiencies, this
meant that 4.8 million, or 32 percent of the 15 million American men
who had been examined for duty by December 1944, were found to
be unfit for service.^15 Of those who had been inducted but subsequently
discharged, 40 percent were for neuropsychiatric reasons. Following the
war, 25 percent of general hospital beds and 10 percent of psychiatric
hospital beds were filled by neurologically disabled veterans, and by