other unit responsible for the indigent cases as dependents,[1] and, finally, in five states the expense is shared between the state and the county or town.[2]
Few states have made any adequate provision for the care of those cases proving to be chronic. While a few states have special wards or special asylums for this class, they are usually discharged from the hospitals in order to obtain room for the more recent and the more violent cases. Six states (California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, and Pennsylvania) have established state asylums, and transfer their chronic patients to them.[3] Some few of the harmless class are boarded with families. In Massachusetts the State Board of Lunacy and Charity is authorized to board out the harmless insane who are state dependents. The overseers of the poor are likewise authorized to board out those who are dependent upon the towns. The expense of boarding these with families is not to exceed the
- ↑ The indigent insane are a county expense in Alabama (1245, 1255), Maryland (2, art. 59), Michigan (1904, 1912, 1914), Missouri (484, 5556, 5558), South Carolina (1585, 1601), South Dakota (Act of March 27, 1891), and Tennessee (2619, 2623- 2627). In Michigan the insane after two years' confinement become state charges. The counties bear the expense of those indigents in Iowa (2218-2226, 2236) and Nebraska (3365-3366) who have, the state of those who have not, county settlements. So, too, in Massachusetts (31, 34, ch. 87) the state or the town bears the expense according as the indigent is a state or a town charge, and in New Hampshire (20-26, ch. 10) the state, the county, or the town bears the expense according as the person is a criminal, or as he has only a county settlement, or as he has a town settlement.
- ↑ In Connecticut (Act of June 13, 1S95) the relatives, or, if indigent, the county, must pay $2 per week for the patient, the state bearing the additional expense. The state of Maine (14, ch. 143) pays Si. 50 per week for each indigent inmate of the asylum, the towns bearing the remaining expense. The counties of Pennsylvania (52, p. 1258, and 162, p. 1268) pay $1.75 per week toward the support of their indigent acute insane, the state not more than $2 to cover the additional cost. In the case of the chronic insane, the counties pay $1 per week, the state not more than Si. 50. The counties of New Jersey (29, 30, 36, p. 1985) pay S3 per week toward the support of their indigents in the state hospital, the state, as will be seen later, subsidizing in turn the counties caring for the insane. Finally, the state of Wisconsin (595, 604k and n pays the counties $2.75 per week for the acute, and $1.50 per week for the chronic insane, cared for by them, the counties in turn paying $1.50 per week for the indigent patients cared for by the state.
- ↑ Mr. Warner, in his American Charities, states that the popular clamor against adjudging anyone incurably insane has been sufficient in California to defeat the purpose of the law providing a hospital for chronic cases, and that the new hospital and the old ones alike are used for both the curable and the chronic insane.
