Search results
Apr 15, 2021 · Innovative approaches to strengthen the public mental health strategy warrant careful deliberation. This article reintroduces and explores the conceptual framework of mental hygiene. The concept of mental hygiene was originally introduced in the early 20th century, with the aim of preventing and treating mental illness and milder mental disorders.
- View PDF/ePub
PK SKKVoa«, mimetypeapplication/epub+zipPK SKKV...
- Login
Innovative approaches to strengthen the public mental health...
- Forgotten your password
We would like to show you a description here but the site...
- View PDF/ePub
Mental health is the condition of having mental and emotional well-being. People experiencing mental health typically feel comfortable about themselves. They are able to meet the demands of daily life and to form healthy relationships with other people. They are free from mental illness, or conditions that cause significant emotional distress ...
Jan 1, 2019 · The term mental hygiene has been traced back to William Sweitzer in 1843. Mental hygiene refers to any community and personal practices taken to promote and preserve mental health. For almost two hundred years, many psychiatrists, physicians, and wellbeing professionals have called for action to help preserve mental health and wellness.
The term mental hygiene has a long history in the United States, having first been used by William Sweetzer in 1843. After the Civil War, which increased concern about the effects of unsanitary conditions, Dr. J. B. Gray, an eminent psychiatrist, envisioned a community-based mental hygiene that would operate through education, social culture ...
- Overview
- Early institutions
- Modern approaches
mental hygiene, the science of maintaining mental health and preventing the development of psychosis, neurosis, or other mental disorders.
Since the founding of the United Nations the concepts of mental health and hygiene have achieved international acceptance. As defined in the 1946 constitution of the World Health Organization, “health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” The term mental health represents a variety of human aspirations: rehabilitation of the mentally disturbed, prevention of mental disorder, reduction of tension in a stressful world, and attainment of a state of well-being in which the individual functions at a level consistent with his or her mental potential. As noted by the World Federation for Mental Health, the concept of optimum mental health refers not to an absolute or ideal state but to the best possible state insofar as circumstances are alterable. Mental health is regarded as a condition of the individual, relative to the capacities and social-environmental context of that person. Mental hygiene includes all measures taken to promote and to preserve mental health. Community mental health refers to the extent to which the organization and functioning of the community determines, or is conducive to, the mental health of its members.
The history of care for the mentally ill reflects human cultural diversity. The earliest known mental hospitals were established in the Arab world, in Baghdad (ad 918) and in Cairo, with that special consideration traditionally given disturbed people, the “afflicted of Allāh.” Some contemporary African tribes benignly regard hallucinations as communications from the realm of the spirits; among others, Hindu culture shows remarkable tolerance for what is considered to be bizarre behaviour in Western societies. The Western interpretation of mental illness as being caused by demonic possession reached its height during a prolonged period of preoccupation with witchcraft (15th through 17th century) in Europe and in colonial North America.
So-called madhouses such as Bedlam (founded in London in 1247) and the Bicêtre (the Paris asylum for men) were typical of 18th-century mental institutions in which the sufferers were routinely shackled. Inmates of these places often were believed to be devoid of human feeling, and their management was indifferent if not brutal; the primary consideration was to isolate the mentally disturbed from ordinary society. In British colonial America, mentally deranged persons frequently were auctioned off to be cared for (or exploited) by farmers; some were driven from towns by court order, and others were placed in almshouses. Only after more than a century of colonization was the first British colonial asylum for the insane established in Williamsburg, Va., in 1773. In the 1790s, the French reformer Philippe Pinel scandalized his fellow physicians by removing the chains from 49 inmates of the Bicêtre. At about the same time, William Tuke, a Quaker tea and coffee merchant, founded the York (England) Retreat to provide humane treatment. Benjamin Rush, a physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence, also advocated protection of the rights of the insane. Despite this progress, more than half a century of independence passed in the United States before Dorothea Dix, a teacher from Maine, discovered that in Massachusetts the insane were being jailed along with common criminals. Her personal crusade in the 1840s led to a flurry of institutional expansion and reform in her own country, in Canada, and in Great Britain.
While these pioneering humanitarian efforts tended to improve conditions, one unplanned result was a gradual emphasis on centralized, state-supported facilities in which sufferers were sequestered, often far from family and friends. Largely kept from public scrutiny, the unfortunate inmates of what fashionably were being called mental hospitals increasingly became victims of the old forms of maltreatment and neglect.
Exclusive academic rate for students! Save 67% on Britannica Premium.
The modern mental-health movement received its first impetus from the energetic leadership of a former mental patient in Connecticut, Clifford Whittingham Beers. First published in 1908, his account of what he endured, A Mind That Found Itself, continues to be reprinted in many languages, inspiring successive generations of students, mental-health workers, and laymen to promote improved conditions of psychiatric care in local communities, in schools, and in hospitals. With the support of prominent persons, including distinguished professionals, Beers in 1908 organized the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene, the first association of its kind. In its charter, members were charged with responsibility for the same pursuits that continue to concern mental-health associations to this day: improvement of standards of care for the mentally disturbed, prevention of mental disorder and retardation, the conservation of mental health, and the dissemination of sound information. In New York City less than a year later, on February 19, 1909, Beers led in forming the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, which in turn was instrumental in organizing the National Association for Mental Health in 1950.
While philosophic and scientific bases for an international mental-health movement were richly available, Beers seems to have served as a catalytic spark. Charles Darwin and his contemporaries already had shattered traditional beliefs in an immutable human species with fixed potentialities. By the time Beers began his public agitation, it was beginning to be understood that developing children need not suffer some of the crippling constraints imposed on their parents. A newly emerging scientific psychology had revealed some of the mechanisms by which the environment had its effects on individual adjustment, fostering hopes that parents and community could provide surroundings that would enhance the growth and welfare of children beyond levels once thought possible. In this spirit, the mental-health movement early inspired the establishment of child-guidance clinics and programs of education for parents and for the public in general.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jun 17, 2022 · Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community. It is an integral component of health and well-being that underpins our individual and collective abilities to make decisions, build relationships and shape ...
People also ask
How important is Mental Hygiene?
What does mental health mean?
What was a community based mental hygiene?
What is the conceptual framework of Mental Hygiene?
What is a mental hygiene movement?
Who invented Mental Hygiene?
Apr 13, 2023 · The quality of a person's mental health is often measured by how adaptively they can cope with everyday stressors. Mental health allows people to use their abilities, be productive, make decisions, and play an active role in their communities. Having poor mental health is often confused with having a mental illness.
