Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-p2v8j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-09T21:00:45.932Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Preventive Psychiatry—is There Such a Thing?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2018

G. M. Carstairs
G. M. Carstairs*
Affiliation:
Medical Research Council, Social Psychiatry Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Hospital, London, S.E.5
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The task of preventive psychiatry—if there is such a thing—can be expressed in a positive form as the promotion of mental health; but mental health can be defined in two ways: as the absence of recognizable mental illness or, in more grandiose terms, as the realization to the fullest possible extent of one's personal potentialities. The latter concept has been denounced by some authorities as representing much too wide an extension of psychiatry: that it continues to be prominent in discussions of mental health programmes and the like is due to the insistence of laymen perhaps even more than of psychiatrists. It appears that in the Western World people are increasingly turning to psychiatrists for the answer to problems which once would have been the concern of priests or politicians. That they do so is a psychiatric problem in itself; that they will continue to do so in increasing numbers seems very likely—so we had better have our answers ready, even if they are only disclaimers of problems which do not concern us.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 104 , Issue 434 , January 1958 , pp. 63 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1958 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Appel, J. W., and Beebe, G. W., J.A.M.A., 1946, 131, 18, 1469–75.Google Scholar
Bleuler, E., Dementia Praecox, 1950. New York: Int. Univ. Press. (Translation of his 1911 monograph.)Google Scholar
BOWLBY, J., Maternal Care and Mental Health, 1950. Geneva: W.H.O. Google Scholar
Idem, et al., Brit. J. Med. Psychol., 1956, 29, 211–47.Google Scholar
Clarke, A. D. B., and Clarke, A. H., Lancet, 1953, ii, 1025–30.Google Scholar
Faris, R. E. L., and Dunham, W. H., Mental Disorders in Urban Areas, 1939. Chicago.Google Scholar
Fenichel, O., The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis, 1945. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Gillespie, R. D., Psychological Effects of War on Citizen and Soldier, 1924. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Glass, A. J., “Psychiatry in the Korean Campaign”, U.S. Armed Forces Med. J., 1953, 4, No. 10, 1387–1401 and No. 11, 1563–83.Google Scholar
Halliday, J. L., Psychosocial Medicine, 1948. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Hare, E. H., J. Ment. Sci., 1956, 102, 349–57.Google Scholar
Hunt, William C., Wittson, Cecil L., and Hunt, Edna B., Amer. J. Psychiat., 1952, 109, 168–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kalinowsky, L. B., ibid., 1950, 107, 340–45.Google Scholar
Kasanin, J., and Veo, L., Amer. J. Orthopsychiat., 1932, 2, 212–217.Google Scholar
Kingsley, C., Health and Education, 1874. London, p. 20.Google Scholar
Lewis, A. J., Lancet, 1935, ii, 293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Idem and Goldsmidt, H., Sociol. Rev., 1943, 35, 86–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mead, M., Amer. J. Orthopsychiat., 1954, 24, 471–83.Google Scholar
O'Connor, N., and Tizard, J., The Social Problem of Mental Deficiency, 1956. London: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Plesset, Marvin R., Amer. J. Psychiat., 1946, 103, 87–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, M. E., Lilienfeld, A. M., and Pasamanick, B., “Prenatal and Paranatal Factors in the Development of Childhood Behaviour Disorders”, Acta Psych. et Neuroscand., 1955, Suppl. 102.Google Scholar
Sainsbury, P., Suicide in London, 1955. (Maudsley Monograph, No. 1.)Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.