Mental hygiene

Mental hygiene includes all measures taken to promote and to preserve mental health, or the condition of the individual relative to his capacities and to his socio-environmental contact. It represents a variety of human aspirations: rehabilitation of the mentally disturbed, prevention of mental disorder, reduction of tension in a conflict-laden world, and attainment of a state of well-being consistent with the individual's mental and physical potential.

In practice, mental hygiene is primarily concerned with care for the mentally and emotionally sick, improvement in the treatment and care of the emotionally sick and feebleminded, and clarification of the part played by psychological and mental disturbance in child-rearing, employment and criminology. Institutional care concentrates primarily on these activities. A major factor is also the effect of physical ill-health or handicap on mental health.

However, to the extent that institutionalized mental hygiene can focus on the improvement of mental health (as opposed to the care of those defined as sick), its aims may include: the development of the power of self-discovery through experiences of self and self-knowledge; development of the struggle for a true self-affirmation; the capacity to give other people the same value as the individual claims for himself; unhampered development of a power to love, unhampered performance of normal functions; and development of the power to make appropriate, unprejudiced judgments.

Efforts have been made to elaborate a concept of positive mental health (separately described).