Just recently, the Department of Mental Hygiene supplied me with
some figures which I think are of great significance regarding our total
effort in the area of mental retardation. They have to do with the
increasing role our public schools are playing in caring for boys and
girls who are mentally retarded. In the school year 1957-1958, I am
advised there were 6, 363 mentally retarded children enrolled in our
public school system. Five years later—in the school year 1962-1963—
that enrollment had jumped to 17, 869, or, in other words, had almost
tripled. That included the boys and girls enrolled in special classes in
the public schools. Those being trained in their homes under the home-
teacher program and those receiving special tuition for training in the
public schools.

A point to make here is that the problem of the mentally retarded is
not a problem to be resolved by one State department or agency. But
instead requires the cooperation and coordination of many different
groups and individuals. It is a problem that transcends the efforts of
the physicians and the experts in the field. An effective program for the
retarded requires the combined efforts of educators, of sociologists—
indeed the efforts of all citizens who in working together create what we
call a community.

Of course we realize that, so far as we are able to foresee, there will
remain with us that residuary of patients which we now classify as the
severely handicapped who must continue to be hospitalized here at Rose-
wood State Hospital or at other similar hospitals. We must continue to
broaden and strengthen our program for the care and treatment of the
one of ten among our retardates who require hospitalization, just as we
are doing by the erection of these two spastic buildings here at Rosewood.

To relieve Rosewood of some of its burden, we are staffing and equip-
ping the Henryton State Hospital for severely retarded patients. And
our plans, of course, call for the construction of another hospital-type
facility in the Washington metropolitan area.

Your State government is fully aware that our efforts must be acceler-
ated and strengthened if we are to meet our responsibilities, in the field
not only of mental retardation but in mental illness as well. President
Kennedy's description of these two health problems—that they occur
more frequently, require more prolonged treatment, cause more suffering
among families, cost more and waste more of our human resources than

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