IS INSANITY INCREASING ? ...............part #1 It was only yesterday that we had to warn our readers against drawing false conclusions from statistics. To-day we have to call attention to a curious and most impressive illustration of the deceitfulness of figures. In answer to the question ' Is insanity increasing ? ', there are certain figures that seem to reply, "Yes, enormously, alarmingly." The number of lunatics, idiots, and persons of unsound mind in England and Wales reported to the Commissioners in Lunacy 'as resident in asylums and other establishments for the insane, and in workhouses or with their relatives or others' was 36,762. The number had increased in 1896 to 96,446, showing a ratio to every 10,000 of the population of 31.38, as compared with 18.67 at the previous period. Nine men out of ten, especially if they wanted to prove a case, say, for the renewal of some abandoned restrictive legislation, would jump to the conclusion that there certainly was an alarming increase of insanity, and nobody could blame them for rashness. Nevertheless, their conclusion would be in reality, rash and unwarranted. Figures don't prove everything, and they have a trick of concentrating attention on themselves and diverting notice from other essential considerations. The Commissioners in Lunacy, after a careful investigation, have come to the conclusion that there has been no important increase of insanity. On the contrary, they quote with approval, the opinion of the Registrar-General that there has been a slight decline in the yearly occurrence of new cases of insanity in the population. Dividing the twenty years 1871 to 1891 into two decades, the experience of each has been this. In the first there was one fresh case of insanity every year to 1,451 persons in the population; in the second there was only one fresh case for every 1,513. Bad enough, no doubt; but the tendency is a decreasing one. How is this conclusion and the one first quoted to be reconciled ? The simple explanation is that we have been accumulating our lunatics, and not greatly varying the amount of lunacy. We have been taking greater care of them, so that their lives have been preserved, and the numbers left on our hands at each annual count have increased in that way. We have not been so ready to discharge them as "recovered", and that fact again has led to the swelling of the accumulated numbers. We have been building asylums for the care of the insane, and the population has been putting more and more confidence in the asylums. Insane persons who would have been kept at home before are now sent to asylums; there is better registration, and, in short, there is an increase of "officially-known persons of unsound mind." .....to be continued.....