Mental hygiene

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An interesting phase of the mental hygiene movement is the relation which it has been shown to hold to the field of industry. It must be admitted that this is an intensely practical question. We even have a Journal of Industrial Hygiene, which has been published successfully now for some time. The mere taking of intelligence tests for industrial purposes is only an incident. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Teachers and many parents could read advantageously [361] also The Normal Mind, by William H. Burnham, professor of pedagogy and school hygiene in Clark University. If our knowledge of what we call mental hygiene shows us anything, it shows us that most people do not utilize the brains they have. The whole purpose of mental hygiene is to teach how to make the most of one’s inborn ability. ”

“ My own personal hope for the future of human health lies in the evolution and spread of this gospel of hygiene.
Hygiene interests itself in all that relates to human well-being. It may be defined as the ethics of the body—the science of true living. It promises health to all who obey its laws. It makes no such promise to those who disregard them. In the future, no doubt, a higher average of health will be the result of our ever-increasing knowledge; and whenever we are able and willing to apply this knowledge to our own bodily and mental conduct we shall be amply rewarded. ”

“ Mental hygiene has hitherto enjoyed an evil reputation and has been condemned to generally evil associations, because the rank and file have been ignorant of hygiene of every kind. Medical science has so long enveloped itself in mystery that it is in danger now of becoming discredited and of falling heir to the mantle of quackery. ”

“ The girl who suffers considerably from any of these disorders at the monthly period should be relieved from the strain of examinations, the classroom, and lessons which must be learned, although mental hygiene requires that her mind be kept active and her interests in quiet pleasures stimulated. ”

“ We have passed from giving mere wholesale advice to a conscientious study of the problems of each unit, and at the same time we have developed a new and sensible approach to mental hygiene and prevention, as expressed in the comprehensive surveys of State and community work and even more clearly in the development of helps to individuals in finding themselves, and in the work in schools to reach those who need a special adaptation of aims and means. ”

“ 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 result of a curious obtuseness to the economics of personal and domestic hygiene is also responsible for another serious dereliction of parental duty, by which health and progress have been grievously, though quite unnecessarily and constantly, hampered. I refer to the general failure to economise nervous energy or to take any interest in what is rightly called mental hygiene. Yet Press and people alike deplore the evident increase of mental abnormalities, and anticipate the future with undisguised anxiety. ”

“ Unless we know as to what is not of interest, apptitude, temper, temperament, attitude and value others have, we may not be able to make adjustment with others, therefore, knowledge and understanding of other people is very much needed for good mental hygiene. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not only profoundly true that mental attitude has much to do with bodily function, capable of producing changes in its nutrition and secretion, but we may go further and say that healthful and hopeful habits of thought do much to put the body on the defensive against the assaults of disease. ”

“ You will see that the doctrine and practice of our own time must probably change in their turn, and that, if we can trust at all to the indications of their course, it will be in the direction of an improved hygiene and a simplified treatment. Especially will the old habit of violating the instincts of the sick give place to a judicious study of these same instincts. It will be found that bodily, like mental insanity, is best managed, for the most part, by natural soothing agencies. ”

“ Every means of hygienic, intellectual, and religious influence should be used to direct and strengthen both mind and body. For both young men and young women it is hygiene in its largest sense that should be prescribed and enforced—viz., the guidance of the early vital forces, both physical and mental, into natural beneficial directions. ”

“ Disease, therefore, being beneficial, should be welcomed as a friend, and every assistance given to Nature to assist her in restoring normal conditions.
Prevention is better than cure, you will all agree, and the great elements of prevention are, knowledge of self, cleanliness, physical, mental and moral; hygiene and sanitation. I contend that physiology is the most important subject that can engage the attention of the individual. Nothing is so essential as a knowledge of the functioning of the body in which he dwells, for it is the vehicle through which the real self is to find expression ”

“ Hygiene, or the art of preserving health, is the practical use of Physiology. It teaches us how to cultivate our bodily and mental powers, so as to increase our strength and to fit us for a higher enjoyment of life. It also shows us how to prevent some of the accidents which may befall the body, and to avoid disease. It is proper that we should {12}understand the construction and powers of our bodies; but it is our duty, as rational beings, to know the laws by which health and strength may be maintained and disease warded off. ”

“ Very great and permanent benefit may be obtained by a prolonged course of such mental and physical hygiene; the associated neurasthenic conditions may be largely removed, with the morbid fears, suspicions, and irritabilities that are usually part of neurasthenia, and the invert may be brought into a fairly wholesome and tonic condition of self-control. ”

“ Such persons should enter upon a daily and systematic course of physical training, and their labor should be in the open air, in order that the system may be invigorated and freed from disease.
831. The moral feelings exert a controlling influence over the functions of the muscular, digestive, and respiratory organs. They also exert an influence, perhaps, more powerful upon the nervous system. While fear and anxiety depress, hope and the enlivening emotions, facilitate the functional activity of the brain, and increase its power for mental exertion. ”

“ One will cease alcohol drinking, another will give up tobacco smoking, another will give up coffee; a third will cease using all “red meats,” another turns vegetarian, another adopts a raw food diet; another takes up outdoor sleeping; another adopts a daily game of golf; another embraces a mental healing cult; another takes up mastication. But great and permanent results require the adoption of an all-round, well-balanced regime.
Section III—The Obstacles to Hygiene
Effort of the Will
It is not enough that the individual should know how to live. Knowledge is of no avail without practise. ”

“ When we search the literature of child hygiene for reliable evidence as to the injurious effects upon mental ability of malnutrition, decayed teeth, obstructed breathing, reduced sleep, bad ventilation, insufficient exercise, etc., we are met by endless assertion painfully unsupported by demonstrated fact. We have, indeed, very little exact knowledge regarding the mental effects of any of the factors just mentioned. When standardized mental tests have come into more general use, such influences will be easy to detect wherever they are really present. ”

“ The methods now in use to prevent physical disease may be applied to a considerable extent in preventing mental disease. They include the dissemination of knowledge of hygiene and sanitation, prompt treatment of incipient diseases, segregation of those suffering from contagious diseases, and immunization of those liable to exposure to pathogenic germs. Another line of attack consists in safeguarding the public from injurious food and artificial beverages and from polluted air and water. ”

“ In spite of our great advance in medical knowledge and practice and in spite of the results of an improved hygiene there remains in society at large a very great deposit of physical ill-being sometimes acute, sometimes chronic, sometimes clearly defined, sometimes vague, badly treated cases, hopeless cases and a great reach of cases which are due rather to disturbed mental and moral states than to ascertainable physical causes. ”

“ Not until such measures as these, under the controlling influence of a sense of personal responsibility extending to every member of the [403] community, have long been put into practice, can we hope to see man on the earth risen to his full stature, healthy in body, noble in spirit, beautiful in both alike, moving spaciously and harmoniously among his fellows in the great world of Nature, to which he is so subtly adapted because he has himself sprung out of it and is its most exquisite flower. At this final point social hygiene becomes one with the hygiene of the soul. ”

“ They usually forfeit more than they win by such selfish concentration. It is a symptom of disease to think constantly about one’s health. The most effectual remedy for it is to think about increasing the comfort of others.
There is no need for me to go into details of what such a training should be to protect one as much as possible against the development of hereditary diseases. The precepts must be adapted to the particular case and circumstances, and in this age Personal Hygiene is a science by itself, with abundant and competent instructors. ”

“ On the contrary, it strikes me that a reasonable and hygienic mode of life can not only lengthen existence but can also render it both merry and bright, whereas the neglect of hygiene in addition to disturbing the even course of our life may also bring it to a premature end. ”

“ It has been practised with signal lack of success for several thousand years. Therefore, if Social Hygiene is really to progress among us on sane and fundamental lines, it is necessary for us to realize clearly the mistakes of the past. ”

“ Social Relations.—In considering the external conditions that affect the nervous system, the fact must not be overlooked that man is a social being and has to adjust himself to an established social order. His relations to his fellow-men, therefore, affect strongly his nervous condition and theirs also. For this reason the best hygiene of the nervous system is based upon moral as well as physical right living. ”

“ Now I would not dream of insulting the understanding of my readers by presuming that they do not know what the simple rules of hygiene which tend to long life, perfect health, and calm happiness, are. There is hardly a sixteen-year-old schoolboy nowadays who has not got these at his finger-ends; but, unfortunately, if we do not act up to them with a regularity that at length becomes a habit, we are apt to let them slip from our mind; and it is so easy to fall off into a poor condition of health, but not so very easy to pull one’s self together again. ”

“ On the contrary, they study the patient and the conditions under which he lives when he (the patient) is perfectly well and they remove every possible cause of illness by cleaning up rubbish, by teaching him what to eat and what to avoid, and by giving him a few simple ideas of personal hygiene. ”

“ Controlling all the activities of the body and affecting through its own condition the welfare of all the organs, the hygiene of the nervous system is, in a large measure, the hygiene of the entire body. ”

“ The people who are now greatly concerned with the exact temperature of their own minds are, at any rate, to be congratulated on having made the discovery, which is centuries overdue, that hygiene of the soul is more important than hygiene of the body. ”