There is a direct correlation between the incidence of mental disorder and high-rise living. Such housing has a tendency to isolate people in their apartments; home life is separated from casual street life by hallways, long passageways, stairs and lifts; the decision to go out in search of public life becomes formal and awkward; and unless there is some specific task to bring people out into the world, they tend to stay at home alone. There is also a remarkable lack of communication between families in high-rise buildings. Children and the elderly are especially isolated; the elderly are too tired, feeble or discouraged to go through the apartment maze to get to the outside, and children become conditioned to a life within walls.