Large numbers regularly resorted to 'cunning women', who offered to heal both their physical and psychological ills by magical means.

As many as one in four of the 14,000 prisoners in city jails on an average day have psychological ills, which need close supervision and expensive medicines.

To the layperson, symptoms of psychological ills often seem vaguer, more diffuse than physiological ones.

The study concluded that "the sociological, psychological and medical ills commonly attributed to marijuana have been exaggerated insofar as the City of New York is concerned."

Newman believes that everyday psychological ills are brought about by the same bourgeois social order that supposedly is the cause of poverty and wars.

"And if you say the problem is psychological, this generates anger on the part of patients who don't regard psychological ills as legitimate."

But the idea that abortion is at the root of women's psychological ills is not supported by the bulk of the research.

He added that some Catholics continued to interpret psychological ills as simple moral failing and shun psychotherapy.

The federal government uses the term "readjustment" to refer to the catch basin of psychological ills plaguing today's veterans as they return to their former lives.

Unlike many immigrants, refugees often arrive with little property, no money and physical and psychological ills.