“…It is not the purpose of this paper to comment on the results of this study. But we should note that the Midtown data, which made the headlines of several US newspapers in 1962 (Smith, 2021), were rather alarming: of the 1660 files examined, 398 showed individuals with serious psychiatric symptoms, and in a large proportion of the other files, the authors found indications of some marked psychological suffering. This would mean that more than 20% of the inhabitants of Manhattan had to be considered as suffering from serious mental disorders, and also that a large majority of them, nearly 60%, seemed to present some psychiatric symptoms without ever having had the slightest contact with a psychiatric institution.…”