A.A.'s Country-wide News Circuit

At its 119th annual convention the Episcopal diocese of Kentucky adopted a plan to provide psychiatric treatment for alcoholics in cooperation with A.A. The new wing being constructed at Norton Memorial Infirmary, the diocesan hospital, will be given over to the program. In connection with such activities the Rev. Canon Sydney B. Peters of Bay Shore, L. I., N. Y., who has been active in cooperation with A.A. calls attention to E. M. Jellinek's Recent Trends in Alcoholism which says on Page 38, concerning admissions to mental hospitals, "While first admissions for alcoholic psychoses to veterans' hospitals show a small decrease after 1940 with a sharp upturn in 1943, first admissions for alcoholism without psychosis show a sharp decline after 1940, and this continued even in 1943 or became even more pronounced in that year. The years 1942 and 1943 were the last years of the first substantial increase in the membership of Alcoholics Anonymous and it is suggested that the quite considerable drop in first admissions for alcoholism without psychosis to veterans' hospitals may reflect absorption of this part of the alcoholic population into groups of A.A."