Mental Illness Program
In that same 1958 NEA interview, Sullivan noted his pride about the role that the show had had in improving the public's understanding of mental illness. Sullivan considered his May 17, 1953 telecast to be the single most important episode in the show's first decade. During that show, a salute to the popular Broadway director Joshua Logan, the two men were watching in the wings, and Sullivan asked Logan how he thought the show was doing. According to Sullivan, Logan told him that the show was dreadfully becoming "another one of those and-then-I-wrote shows"; Sullivan asked him what he should do about it, and Logan volunteered to talk about his experiences in a mental institution.
Sullivan took him up on the offer, and in retrospect believed that several advances in the treatment of mental illness could be attributed to the resulting publicity, including the repeal of a Pennsylvania law about the treatment of the mentally ill and the granting of funds for the construction of new psychiatric hospitals.
Read more about this topic: The Ed Sullivan Show
Famous quotes containing the words mental, illness and/or program:
“‘Don’t be afraid of me because I’m just coming back home from
the mental hospital—I’m your mother—’”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)
“Men have their own questions, and they differ from those of mothers. New mothers are more interested in nutrition and vulnerability to illness while fathers tend to ask about when they can take their babies out of the house or how much sleep babies really need.”
—Kyle D. Pruett (20th century)
“Along the highway, all but lost among blatant neon lights flashing ‘Whiskey’ and ‘Dance and Dine,’ are crudely daubed warnings erected by itinerant evangelists, announcing that ‘Jesus is soon coming,’ or exhorting the traveler to ‘prepare to meet thy God.’”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)