The mental hygiene movement: institutional response to individual concern. The early years of the Philadelphia Child Guidance Clinic

Growing recognition of the importance of mental hygiene to social needs generally and to the education of children particularly was evident during the decade of the 1960s. In 1970, the Joint Commission on Mental Health of Children, in response to a mandate by the United States Congress, reported that the mental health of childhood should be the nation's highest priority. A study of the mental hygiene movement and its influence on the education of children, therefore, is meaningful to the degree that it reveals the motivation and activities of individuals within the field. Thus, the history of the movement must be told from the point of view of those who showed most clearly their own synthesis of intensive thought and social commitment to the mental health of children.