Origin of mental health and the current

The concept of mental health, given its one of the most recognised topics on the planet, 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.

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 : “Mental hygiene refers to all the activities and ways 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.”...Which is so hard in our new world

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.

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.

THE MENTAL HEALTH RACE

The origin of the mental hygiene movement can be attributed to the work of Clifford Beers in the USA. In 1908 he published - A mind that found itself 4-, a book based on his personal experience of admissions to three mental hospitals. The book had a great influence and in the same year a Mental Hygiene Society was established in Connecticut.

“When the National Committee was organized, in 1909, its chief concern was to humanize the care of the insane: to eradicate the abuses, brutalities and neglect from which the mentally sick have traditionally suffered.”

It was at a later stage that the Committee enlarged its program to include the “milder forms of mental disability” and a greater concern with preventive work. The rationale behind this shift was the belief that “mental disorders frequently have their beginnings in childhood and youth and that preventive measures are most effective in early life (example; BPD)”, and that environmental conditions and modes of living produce mental ill health.

By 1937, the US National Committee for Mental Hygiene stated that it sought to achieve its purposes by a).promoting early diagnosis and treatment 2.) developing adequate hospitalization 3. stimulating research d). securing public understanding and support of psychiatric and mental hygiene activities e). instructing individuals and groups in the personal application of mental hygiene principles and f) .cooperating with governmental and private agencies whose work touches at any point the field of mental hygiene.

According to the group which launched it, the mental hygiene movement “visualized, not a single patient, but a whole community; and it considered each member of that community as an individual whose mental and emotional status was determined by definite causative factors and whose compelling need was for prevention rather than cure.

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION

From its very beginning, the WHO has always had an administrative section specially dedicated to mental health, as an answer to requests from its Member States. The first Report of the WHO’s Director General , in its English version, refers to an administrative section called “Mental Health”.

On the whole, mental health continues to be used both to designate a state, a dimension of health – an essential element in the definition of health – and to refer to the movement derived from the mental hygiene movement, corresponding to the application of psychiatry to groups, communities and societies, rather than on an individual basis, as is the case with clinical psychiatry. However, mental health is, quite unfortunately, still viewed by many as a discipline, either as a synonym of psychiatry.

2023 and mental health is still not given the enough attention it needs. Suicide rates keep increasing across the globe. It is upto us to improve the lives of one another .