Mental health

“ To true religious reformers, the physician best acquainted with the causation of mental disease will award his heartiest approval. Only as the high claims of duty, demanded from man by considerations of the dependence of his work in the world upon mental health, of what he owes to his fellow-men, and of what he owes to God, are fulfilled as well as acknowledged, will civilized man benefit by his civilization, as regards the prevention of insanity. ”

“ Application of Principles.—The best possible source of relief from that combination of mental despondency, and the lack of bodily vitality which so often accompanies it, and which, if not interrupted, may lead to a serious breakdown of mental health, is the discipline of work; above all, work for the benefit, of others, to which one forces one's self gradually but persistently, not with, long intervals, but day after day. ”

“ Such work is not only for the mentally disordered and those suffering from mental defect, but for all those who, through mental causes, are unable so to adjust themselves to their environment as to live happy and efficient lives. ”

“ Our constituents should not be penalized because they have a mental illness compared to a physical illness. We should ensure that the mental health system provide a more individualized and holistic approach to care without shame or inequity in coverage. Mental illness is like most physical illnesses ”

“ The public mind is unsettled; the individual lives a day-to-day existence, wrestling with disease, mental troubles and unsatisfactory issues. This book outlines a system of psychological reforms that can be followed by every man and woman, as the author says, to “buoyant physical health, release of mental tension, and enlarged and happy outlook on life.” ”

“ During Child Mental Health Month, I encourage all parents, teachers, pediatricians, school nurses, other health care professionals, and concerned citizens across our country to learn more about children's mental health. By doing so, we can recognize more quickly the early warning signs of mental illnesses and disorders. We can detect depression before it deepens into serious illness, raise awareness of risk factors for suicide, and work to prevent more acts of youth violence. ”

“ To stem the tide of syphilis, to wage war on alcohol, to counsel against marriage of defectives, to generalize the insane hospitals, to specialize the general hospitals, to weed defects out of general school classes, to open out the shut-in personality, to ventilate sex questions, to perturb and at the same time reassure the interested public—these are infinitives that belong perhaps in a rational movement for mental hygiene. ”

“ At first thought it might appear that the development and extension of civilization, which carries with it so many and great advantages in many other respects, should also be favorable to mental health. ”

“ That an active and vigorous condition of the mental faculties is compatible with old age. 2. That a continuous and often laborious exercise of the mind is not only consistent with a state of mental health, but is apparently productive of longevity.” It is indeed particularly satisfactory to be told that even in the worst types of mental disease there are some salient and bright spots upon which the physician may act; and that formidable and apparently hopeless and incurable cases of derangement admit, if not of cure, at least of considerable alleviation and mitigation. ”

“ National Mental Health Awareness Month is a time to recognize the millions of American families affected by mental illness and to redouble our efforts to ensure that those who are suffering get the care and treatment they need. Nearly 10 million Americans suffer from a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depression. Unfortunately, approximately 60 percent of adults and 50 percent of adolescents with mental illness do not get the treatment or other services they need. ”

“ The way to [Pg 133] have health is to think it, to expect it, to visualize it, to realize that health is a positive everlasting fact, and disease only negation, the absence of health, which is brought about largely by a wrong mental attitude, by self-thought poisoning, by disobeying the laws of health. If we are going to be well, we must think vigorous, robust, cheerful, health thoughts, and we must observe the laws of health. We shall have the same degree of health that we give to our mental health model. It is our visualizing of health that brings the expected condition. ”

“ When treating the sick, make your mental plea in behalf of the reality of harmony, the nothingness of discord, the fact of health, and the fable of disease, as the Truth of being in contradistinction to the error of life, substance, or intelligence in matter, and plead with an honest conviction of its truth, and a clear perception of its science, and the unchanging, unerring, and certain effects of science. Then, if your morals are half equal to the virtue of your plea, you will heal the sick. Explain to your patient, audibly as he can bear it, the utter control that mind holds over the body ”

“ An enforced sea voyage begins with the disorder; a clever, buoyant physician begins with the fear. Patent-medicine proprietors, quacks, and fakes of every [393] kind begin by displacing the fear with hope or cheer; the physical disorders frequently vanish by the same window as fear. For fear write self-pity, morbid self-consciousness, hypertrophied submission; to hope and cheer add smile, relaxation, and zest; and we have the chief elements of mental hygiene and the reason why intelligent as well as unintelligent men like to be swindled by medical or other quacks. ”

“ Parents, nurses, and doctors, not perceiving these vital points in science, throw their mental weight in the wrong scale, and injure those they would bless. Pursuing an opposite course, and ruling out all mental admissions of disease, they would save the sickness they now occasion. We should recollect suffering is no less a mental condition, than enjoying. When an accident happens, you think, or exclaim, “he is hurt ;” but to prevent the result you fear, you should oppose your own, and the frightened one's admission he is harmed. ”

“ Above all, they can in time bring the public face to face with the fact that mental diseases should be discussed, generally understood and prevented, instead of being merely concealed and misrepresented. ”

“ Erroneous mental practice may seem for a time to benefit the sick, but the recovery is not permanent. This is because erroneous methods act on and through the material stratum of the human mind, called brain, which is but a mortal consolidation of material mentality and its so suppositional activities. ”

“ Its greatest value, however, lies in the fact that he brings home to us so graphically the overwhelming importance of the personal element so often overlooked by those who are accustomed to dealing with mental cases in large numbers. ”

“ No medical skill seconds the efforts of nature for his recovery, or breaks the strength of pain when it seizes him with convulsive grasp. No friends relieve each other in solacing the weariness of protracted disease. No assiduous affection guards the avenues of approaching disquietude. ”

“ In many patients, however, there is no such history, though there is usually the story of symptomatic mental conditions of one or other of the types mentioned, earlier in life. When in good health physically the patient has very little bother from them. ”

“ The physical public health is concerned with communicable disease and its direct results, as in epidemics, while mental public health considers the prevalence, prevention and care of mental disorders, and the new science of mental hygiene. ”

“ There is such an intimate connection between the body and mind, that the health of one can not be preserved without a proper care of the other. And it is from a neglect of this principle that some of the most exemplary and conscientious persons in the world suffer a thousand mental agonies from a diseased state of body, while others ruin the health of the body by neglecting the proper care of the mind.
When the mind is excited by earnest intellectual effort, or by strong passions, the blood rushes to the head and the brain is excited. ”

“ The place of the will in its influence upon health and vitality has long been recognized, not only by psychologists and those who pay special attention to problems of mental healing, but also, as a rule, by physicians and even by the general public. ”

“ Observance of the laws of health, therefore, should be natural and without special effort—a matter of habit. The attention should never be turned with anxiety upon any organ or process, but the mental attitude should at all times be that of confidence in the power of the body organization to do its work. Fear and morbidity, which are disturbing and paralyzing factors, should be supplanted by courage, cheerfulness, and hopefulness. ”

“ Mind is the native stimulus of the body; and mortal belief, taken at its best, is not promotive of health and happiness. But surcharge it with the exploding gases of fear and the weakness of defeat, and what can you expect in the case but some sudden detonation, metastasis, or sinking into the belief of death? Tell the sick, if they only knew their mental power over every action and condition of the body, they would meet sickness fearlessly. ”

“ To think health and strength, to see ourselves continually growing in this condition, is to set into operation the subtlest dynamic force for the externalisation of these conditions in the body that can be even conceived of. If one's bodily condition, through abnormal, false mental and emotional habits, has become abnormal and diseased, this same attitude of mind, of spirit, of imagery, is to set into operation a subtle and powerful corrective agency that, if persisted in, will inevitably tend to bring normal, healthy conditions to the front again. ”

“ The social aspects of mental hygiene are particularly important. Once admitting the power of the mind to decrease vitality, we recognize the duty of seeming happy, buoyant, cheerful, vital, at least when with others, for the sake of others' minds and bodies. Secondly, we find the duty to refrain from commenting on others' appearance in a way that will start "ingrowing thoughts." A "grouchy" foreman can give blues and indigestion to a roomful of factory girls. ”

“ We must also resolve to enhance our understanding of mental illness and its relationship to other complex societal challenges, including homelessness, substance abuse, and suicide; and we reaffirm our commitment to improving prevention, diagnosis, and treatment through innovative medical strategies. ”

“ This must be done not alone because along this way lies relief of suffering, since not a little of the discomfort is due to the mental concentration consequent upon the dread, but because, also, the discouraged state of mind interferes with the trophic influences that go down from the central nervous system to the periphery to keep it in good health and to restore function when there is anything out of order. In a word, the exaggeration of significance so likely to influence such patients for ill must, as far as possible, be removed for their immediate relief as well as ultimate cure. ”

“ With mental hygiene becoming firmly established as a practical field of preventive medicine, another group of persons not directly concerned with the care of the mentally ill has become deeply interested in the forms, types and causes of mental illness. It is by such readers, quite as much as physicians, medical students and nurses, that Dr. ”

“ The mental co-operation of the sick will promote their recovery. To move mind from its central error, viz., that Intelligence and Life are in the body, and matter is the master of man, is the great point in metaphysical healing. Every invalid has an especial fear, in which some disease and its approaching symptoms are more alarming than others; not because the disease is more dangerous, but more feared; remove the fear, and the danger is gone, for mind will master the disease. ”

“ These are the two essentials to thinking in the Certain Way which will make you well: first, claim or appropriate health by faith; and, second, sever all mental relations with disease, and enter into mental relations with health. That which we make ourselves, mentally, we become physically; and that with which we unite ourselves mentally we become unified with physically. If your thought always relates you to disease, then your thought becomes a fixed power to cause disease within you ”

“ THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE OF MENTAL DISEASES The importance of mental diseases as a factor in the social and economic welfare of the community has not been given adequate consideration, notwithstanding the remarkable progress of modern psychiatry. Nor is this influence, unfortunately, one which can be easily estimated or accurately determined. We have, as a matter of fact, no data at hand to show the prevalence of disease, either physical or mental, with any degree of exactness even under our most elaborately organized forms of government. ”

“ It has a very marked tendency to create the atmosphere of placid trust and confidence which means so much for the preservation of sanity. Far from being {214} a provocative of irrational tendencies it soothes patients' minds, prevents them from running into such excesses of emotion as are dangerous for mental balance, and it predisposes those who allow themselves to be deeply influenced by it to live such quiet satisfied lives without inordinate ambition and disordered desires as make for health of mind and body during prolonged life. ”

“ The silence of Christian Science and Love is eloquent. It is powerful to unclasp the hold of disease, and reduce its cause to nothingness.
To prevent disease or to cure it mentally, let Spirit destroy this dream of sense. If you wish to heal by Insistence. argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical. Argue with the patient (mentally, not audibly) that he has no disease, and conform the argument to the evidence. Mentally insist that health is the everlasting fact, and sickness the temporal falsity. ”

“ I call upon health professionals, educators, communications media, the business community, individuals, and public and private organizations concerned with the welfare of their fellow citizens to seek and encourage better understanding of mental disorders and to honor those whose studies, treatment, and support have brought palpable gains and welcome hope to the mentally ill. ”