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Amurao

The concept of mental health originated from the mental hygiene movement in 1908 which aimed to improve conditions and treatment for people with mental disorders. Mental health is a political and ideological concept involving human rights promotion for those with mental disorders. While references to mental health can be found in the 19th century, it was not established as a field until 1946 with the World Health Organization. There is still no clear, widely accepted definition of mental health, but it is increasingly used as a discipline within health ministries and universities, replacing the term mental hygiene. Mental health's relationship to psychiatry, the medical study of mental disorders, also remains delineated.

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92 views2 pages

Amurao

The concept of mental health originated from the mental hygiene movement in 1908 which aimed to improve conditions and treatment for people with mental disorders. Mental health is a political and ideological concept involving human rights promotion for those with mental disorders. While references to mental health can be found in the 19th century, it was not established as a field until 1946 with the World Health Organization. There is still no clear, widely accepted definition of mental health, but it is increasingly used as a discipline within health ministries and universities, replacing the term mental hygiene. Mental health's relationship to psychiatry, the medical study of mental disorders, also remains delineated.

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Joe Ann Ü Delfinado
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Amurao, Erwin Vera Cruz

THSELF

Mental Health

This paper reviews the origins of the current concept of mental health, starting from the
mental hygiene movement, initiated in 1908 by consumers of psychiatric services and
professionals interested in improving the conditions and the quality of treatment of people with
mental disorders. The paper argues that, more than a scientific discipline, mental health is a
political and ideological movement involving diverse segments of society, interested in the
promotion of the human rights of people with mental disorders and the quality of their treatment.

The concept of mental health, given its polysemic nature and its imprecise borders, benefits
from a historical perspective to be better understood. What today is broadly understood by
“mental health” can have its origins tracked back to developments in public health, in clinical
psychiatry and in other branches of knowledge.

Although references to mental health as a state can be found in the English language well
before the 20th century, technical references to mental health as a field or discipline are not
found before 1946. During that year, the International Health Conference, held in New York,
decided to establish the World Health Organization (WHO) and a Mental Health Association
was founded in London. Before that date, found are references to the corresponding concept of
“mental hygiene”, which first appeared in the English literature in 1843, in a book entitled
Mental hygiene or an examination of the intellect and passions designed to illustrate their
influence on health and duration of life 1. Moreover, in 1849, “healthy mental and physical
development of the citizen” had already been included as the first objective of public health in a
draft law submitted to the Berlin Society of Physicians and Surgeons 2.

In 1948, the WHO was created and in the same year the first International Congress on
Mental Health took place in London. At the second session of the WHO’s Expert Committee on
Mental Health (September 11-16, 1950), “mental health” and “mental hygiene” were defined as
follows 3: “Mental hygiene refers to all the activities and techniques which encourage and
maintain mental health. Mental health is a condition, subject to fluctuations due to biological and
social factors, which enables the individual to achieve a satisfactory synthesis of his own
potentially conflicting, instinctive drives; to form and maintain harmonious relations with others;
and to participate in constructive changes in his social and physical environment.”

However, a clear and widely accepted definition of mental health as a discipline was (and is)
still missing. Significantly, the Dorland’s Medical Dictionary does not carry an entry on mental
health, whereas the Campbell’s Dictionary of Psychiatry gives it two meanings: first, as a
synonym of mental hygiene and second, as a state of psychological wellbeing. The Oxford
English Dictionary defines mental hygiene as a set of measures to preserve mental health, and
later refers to mental health as a state. These lexicographic concepts nonetheless, more and more
mental health is employed in the sense of a discipline (e.g., sections/divisions in health ministries
or secretaries, or departments in universities), with an almost perfect replacement of mental
hygiene.

In addition, given this polysemic nature of mental health, its delimitation in relation to
psychiatry (understood as the medical specialty concerned with the study, prevention, diagnosis
and treatment of mental disorders or diseases) is not always clear. There is a more or less
widespread effort to set mental health at least aside from psychiatry and at most as an
overarching concept with encompasses psychiatry.

Reference:

Bertolote, J. (2008). Mental health. From:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC24083


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