MENTAL HYGIENE AS PUBLIC HEALTH PRACTICE

The conviction that psychiatry can contribute to human welfare by working through public health techniques and agencies, as well as through the other medical channels has gained increased acceptance during the past decade. This increased acceptance has come not only on the part of the clinicians, but also on the part of health administrators and the general public. Today, we find a broad and real interest in psychiatry and an impressive demand for mental hygiene services. We can also see the evolution of a practical philosophical framework upon which mental hygiene programs are being built, and we now have at hand a number of promising public health techniques which have been adapted to mental hygiene needs. However, under any conditions the growth of mental hygiene work will continue. Furthermore, it will always be a movement through which psychiatry will be able to emphasize and demonstrate its basic teachings: that health is a totality of physical, emotional and social well-being. Stressing the positive, rather than the pathological, it aims to help people live more effectively, more productively, more in harmony with themselves and their fellows. These objectives are ambitious and far-reaching, but in his work the psychiatrist has many able and enthusiastic allies in other professions and among the public. Working together, we can be confident that these goals will be attained. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)