Beyond the asylum: professionalization and the mental hygiene movement in Canada, 1914-1928.

The mental hygiene movement in Canada emerged in the second decade of this century during a period that has been called the "heyday of public health."2 Understandably, the movement shared some of the features of the public health movement. One of these features was a tension between the priorities of physicians interested in establishing medicine as a successful profession, and the aims and methods of public health as a movement of social r e f ~ r m . ~ This tension was manifested in distinctive forms in the mental hygiene movement. On the one hand, members of the mental hygiene movement and its official voice, the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene (CNCMH), were much concerned with the problems of professionalization. The activities of the CNCMH were closely related to the professionalization of psychiatry and psychology. Through the CNCMH, prominent representatives of both disciplines promoted the facilities of formalized training and scientific research that are necessary for an occupation to achieve professional status in modern society.* On the other hand, many of the problems that preoccupied the mental hygienists were rooted in social factors that seemed far re-