MENTAL HYGIENE

the science of maintaining mental health and preventing the development of psychosis, neurosis, or other mental disorders. Since the founding of the United Nations the concepts of mental health and hygiene have achieved international acceptance. As defined in the 1946 constitution of the World Health Organization, health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. The term mental health represents a variety of human aspirations: rehabilitation of the mentally disturbed, prevention of mental disorder, reduction of tension in a stressful world, and attainment of a state of well-being in which the individual functions at a level consistent with his or her mental potential. As noted by the World Federation for Mental Health, the concept of optimum mental health refers not to an absolute or ideal state but to the best possible state insofar as circumstances are alterable. Mental health is regarded as a condition of the individual, relative to the capacities and social-environmental context of that person. Mental hygiene includes all measures taken to promote and to preserve mental health. Community mental health refers to the extent to which the organization and functioning of the community determines, or is conducive to, the mental health of its members. Throughout the ages the mentally disturbed have been viewed with a mixture of fear and revulsion. Their fate generally has been one of rejection, neglect, and ill treatment. Though in ancient medical writings there are references to mental disturbance that display views very similar to modern humane attitudes, interspersed in the same literature are instances of socially sanctioned cruelty based upon the belief that mental disorders have supernatural origins such as demonic possession. Even reformers sometimes used harsh methods of treatment; for example, the 18th-century American physician Benjamin Rush endorsed the practice of restraining mental patients with his notorious tranquilising chair.