Mind, Body, and the Public Health

Emotional disorder is the public health problem of the day. Over half of our hospital beds are occupied by mental patients, and five out of every one hundred adults will spend some part of their lives in a mental hospital.2 There are more chronic alcoholics than acute cases of tuberculosis.3 Forward-looking and progressive leaders of the public health profession, with eyes sharply focused on the decreasing morbidity and mortality rates resulting from the widening application of sanitary principles and the use on a mass scale of the discoveries of serology and immunology, have drawn attention to the vast importance of enlisting public support for the promotion of mental health. That this is the new public health problem is attested by the current great interest of the public in psychology, psychiatry, mental hygiene, psychosomatic medicine, or whatever name is applied to that body of knowledge which pertains to the maintenance of mental health and the alleviation of mental suffering; by the expansion of courses in psychiatry in medical schools; and by the increasing tendency of public health administrators to include specialists in mental science in their programs.