next ten years, our industries and businesses will need more and more
men and women with these qualities.

The Committee to Promote Employment of the Handicapped faces,
as all of us do, a great challenge in the sixties to move forward in its
work, press home with increasing vigor the value of the principles it
upholds and to help Maryland grow.

ADDRESS, ANNUAL LEGISLATIVE DINNER
MARYLAND ASSOCIATION FOR MENTAL HEALTH

ANNAPOLIS
February 7, 1961

I am honored, let me assure you, to be the guest of an organization
which has done so much to concentrate public attention upon one of
the great social problems of our era—the care and treatment of the
mentally ill in our State. As long as the problem of mental health
remains as grave as it is, here as elsewhere, it would be unbecoming of
me to express anything akin to satisfaction with what has been done
here in Maryland. Nevertheless, I think we can derive a certain amount
of gratification from the progress we have made during these past few
years in the area of mental health.

I am pleased to report to this Association, and to its guests who are
assembled here, that again this year, as was the case of the two previous
years of my Administration, I am recommending substantial additional
funds in the budget to finance this all-important service of State govern-
ment. I am asking the General Assembly to approve for the fiscal year
beginning next July 1 a general fund appropriation of $23, 322, 278 for
the Department of Mental Hygiene. This is $1, 137, 746 more than was
allotted the Department this year. This increase in appropriations for
mental health I am urging, despite the continuing decline in the patient
population of our six mental hospitals. For, as admissions continue to
increase in these hospitals, so have discharges at an even faster pace,
with the result that there has been a steady decline in the total hospital
population. This all comes about, as most of you know, I am sure, by
reason, primarily of two factors:

1. The vigorous development of drugs used in the treatment of
mental patients.

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