Denominations and requests for admission in psychiatric institutions from
1960-1966 in Rotterdam
This article contains an investigation into the supposed relationship between the integration of denominations and requests for admission into a psychiatric hospital. This relationship is supposed to be inverse: the higher the integration of a denomination, the lower the requests of admission. This idea is analogous with Durkheim's thesis for egoistic suicide (par. 1.1). To test the idea for Dutch denominations in the period of 1960-1967 we studied the variation in integration of the 3 main Dutch denominations (par. 1.2) and the relation between integration and mental illness (par. 1.3). 15.098 requests for admission between 1 jan. 1960 -1 jan. 1967 distributed in 5 denominational groups were compared with the denominational groups in the Rotterdam population of 1960. The comparison indicated significant differences between the research group and the denominational groups in the Rotterdam population. The results confirm the hypothesis for the 3 main denominations and find the lower than expected percentage requests for admission of people without denominational bonds as an additional surprise.