Mental Hospitals and the Mental Hygiene Movement in the United States

1. The National Committee for Mental Hygiene: Origins and Achievements The mental hygiene movement in America was launched with the founding of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene in the first decade of the present century. The founder was Clifford Beers, a man whose knowledge of mental illness and its attendant problems came entirely out of his own experience as a patient in mental hospitals. The National Committee was designed to spearhead the reform of these institutions. The mixture of brutality and neglect which passed for " care "