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The mental hygiene movement had developed a theory of emotionality and mental health that cast the emotional lives of people considered ‘mentally deficient’ as ‘primitive’, simple and largely instinctive. Tizard emphasised the children at Brooklands had similar ‘intellectual, social and emotional needs’ to other children.
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 ...
Apr 15, 2021 · The movement lost its momentum shortly thereafter and the concept went largely ignored since then. Mental hygiene is a form of preventive maintenance that can be likened to other hygienic practices. Through the plasticity of the brain, mental training activities can foster healthy cognitive patterns that are conducive to well-being. The article ...
- Guillaume Tremblay, Nicole C. Rodrigues, Sanjiv Gulati
- 2021
Mental hygiene, the public-health perspective within psychiatry, was influential from 1910 until about 1960. Since World War II, mental hygiene ideas became increasingly incorporated into mainstream psychiatry, in particular through the community health movement of the 1960s.
- 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.
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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
With pledges in hand, and an impressive roster of members, the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene (CNCMH) came to be: The day was April 26, 1918, and the Globe and Mail was there again, this time in Ottawa, for the first official meeting of the CNCMH. Today we view the mental hygiene movement through a critical, historical lens.
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What is Mental Hygiene?
The mental hygiene movement has its roots in turn-of-the century Progressive reform movements. The National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NCMH), the organizational spearpoint of the mental hygiene movement, was orga-nized in 1909 by a small, carefully chosen group of reform-minded acade-micians, social workers, physicians, and psychiatrists.
