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improve their state institutions and increase the number of psychiatrists and generally do, because in the states it's universally in every state that the care of the mentally ill is a state function. And in the total nation only about three or four percent of the people who are acutely mentally ill are taken care of in private institutions. It has been in the past too long a term illness and the states had to assume the expense of the mentally ill.
And very few families can afford the expense.
And very few families can afford this.
Well, this Committee had carried on through to since June of '53 and we have constantly invited the newly-elected governors and governors to be honorary chairmen and we have consequently that they were closer to us than they would have been had they not been on the letterhead at least, and many of the governors have been extremely helpful and very progressive in many states.
And it's been a matter of education, hasn't it?
Yes. We send them our literature and certain speeches that Mike Berman, who is Executive Director of the Committee, writes, and testimony before Congress. And we have gotten some of the governors to be extremely helpful and interested.
I think it was interesting that the first of the very few who did not accept was Governor Dewey and James Byrnes, who had
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