1957 Press Photo A patient sits in a rocking chair - noo50821

A Basic Research Crusade is boring into the unknown for clues that may help bring persons like this mental hospital patient back to a happy useful life. Editors Note: For the first time a massive research attack is being made on the unsolved problems of mental illness. Already historic, but as yet unpublicized, discoveries have been made. To get a full progress report from laboratories around the country science writer Leonard Engel, winner of the 1957 Blakeslee award of the American Heart Association, traveled coast to coast and interviewed psychiatrists, brain surgeons and drug research scientists. Here's the first of five articles on a major American health problem and the men who fight it. Five years ago public-spirited citizens in walks of life-ranging from psychiatry and public health to business and the law set out to acquaint the public with the unpleasant fact that mental illness was at once one of the nation's greatest and one of the nation's most neglected health problems.

Photo is dated 1957.

Photo measures 8 x 10.25 inches.