THE DISPROPORTIONATELY large number of first admissions to public mental hospitals arising from the population 65 years of age and over is a matter of much concern to public health, mental hospital, and welfare officials throughout the nation. The reasons for this concern are several. First, the population in the age group 65 and over has been increasing rapidly; and it is anticipated that by 1980 the population in this age group will be 50 per cent more than it is now.1 Therefore, even if admission rates stay at current levels, there will be a considerable increase in the number of persons in this age group admitted to mental hospitals. Second, patients in this age group constitute a special problem for hospital staffs, since they require a great deal of physical and medical care and account to a large extent for the high mortality rate in the mental hospitals. To assist in the solution of this problem considerably more knowledge is needed on the aging process; the etiology of mental illness in the older population; the social, economic, and cultural factors that lead to various patterns of care for those who become ill; and, in particular, the factors that lead to the admissions of these people to the mental hospital as opposed to other community facilities. Although data are available to show the trend of first admission rates for the nation and for the various states,2 there is a paucity of current data on the variations of these rates by such factors as race, marital status, education, urbanrural residence, occupation, etc. The most extensive studies of these rates by such factors were those done by Dayton for first admissions to mental hospitals in the years 1917-1933 in the State of Massachusetts3 and by Malzberg for first admissions to the New York State Civil Hospital for the years 1929-1931 and 1939.1941.4,5,6 Recently, an extensive analysis has been carried out, on first admissions to the state public mental hospitals in Ohio, which yielded certain data on the variations and the rates of admissions to these hospitals for patients with mental