The purpose of this thesis is to provide a descriptive study of psychiatric and social variables related to aged first admissions to a private psychiatric hospital in the calendar years 1959 through 1963. The study also seeks to determine what, if any, relationship exists between background characteristics of the patients and their diagnoses. Finally, the diagnosis of the patient is compared with a series of patient outcome variables to determine the relationship, if any, between diagnosis and selected recovery variables. Due to the nature of the data used, the emphasis of the thesis is upon describing relationships rather than testing hypotheses.

The purpose of this investigation, conceived in its broadest sense, was to study the living arrangements of older persons over a specific period of time in an attempt to arrive at some generalizations about the nature and changes of these arrangements as they relate to certain sociological variables.