Trends in Mental Hygiene

Abstract

THE LAST three years have seen the climax and the close of World War II, and the subsequent chaos of a world left weary, cynical, and struggling to resume life on a peacetime pattern. While peace is always a relative term, the year just past can hardly be called peaceful, save in the sense that major hostilities have disappeared from the world scene. In their stead, however, there exists a seething restlessness, a bitter and irritable distrust among individuals, groups, and nations. In such a time as this, workers in the field of mental hygiene are particularly challenged. So many events of major social and emotional interest are happening, that there is difficulty in finding time to take stock, or to develop a perspective. Yet those disciplines which come together in the mental hygiene interest must indeed assume the responsibility which is basically theirs, and clarify to the utmost their immediate and long-term objectives. Today, as never before, world sanity hangs on the virility of the dynamic social sciences, and on the direction charted by them.