Not necessarily mentally ill, but folk clubs provide a lot of lonely, socially inadequate/unskilled people with a place they can go on the cheap once a week and feel part of a community. If they weren't there, some of them might well deteriorate (the people that is, not the clubs, or yet again . . . ) Anyway, I always thought that's what Jean Oglesby meant. It only becomes a real problem when the number of them in one club becomes quorate . . .