But anyone studying our society today will also uncover some very troubling statistical evidence of personal and social disintegration. The number of patients in mental hospitals and psychiatric outpatient clinics has increased 50 percent in the last ten years. Indeed, no social emotion is more widespread today than the conviction of personal powerlessness, the sense of being beset, beleaguered and persecuted. Juvenile delinquency cases per thousand population have nearly tripled since 1950. The divorce rate has risen steadily since 1940, running as high as 70 percent in some West Coast communities.
None alone proves anything.
But, taken together, they provide some evidence that a great many Americans are showing the strain, and they provide a reasonable basis for suspecting that a great many more of us are feeling pressures that show up in lesser ways. The Wall Street Journal, reporting primarily about and for the nation's conservative businessmen, recently revealed that many corporate executives are simply leaving their desks and going off to the woods. But these are only the most extreme examples. Most Americans are neither statistics nor corporation presidents. They just lead dull lives which produce dull headaches.