“Dictating the Suitable Way of Life”: Mental Hygiene for Children and Workers in Socialist Mexico, 1934–1940

Abstract

After the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), an ambitious project of national reconstruction began in which education and health were two priorities in the consolidation of a new nation. In this context of social, cultural, and political transformation, mental hygiene was a field that made it possible to articulate the professional practice of psychiatrists with the project of the nation promoted by postrevolutionary governments. In Mexico, the mental hygiene movement was headed by the same doctors who professionalized the practice of psychiatry and made it a specialized field of knowledge. The first generation of psychiatrists managed to integrate mental hygiene into health and education policies during the socialist administration of president Lázaro Cárdenas; a phenomenon that made evident the articulation between mental hygiene, social medicine, and nationalist discourse. Discussion will focus on proposals made from the perspective of mental hygiene as a function of two social sectors regarded as priorities by the Cárdenas government: children and workers.

“El trabajo mata”: Los mineros-metalúrgicos y sus enfermedades en el Primer Congreso Nacional de Higiene y Medicina del Trabajo, México, 1937

“…De igual forma, Andrés Ríos Molina ha destacado el interés por parte de la psiquiatría en torno a la higiene mental, como un aspecto vital para el desarrollo adecuado de un trabajador sano y activo. 12 1. Salud y trabajo: leyes, reglamentos y códigos…”

Racial degeneration, mental hygiene, and the beginning of Peruvian psychiatry, 1922–1934.

“…On mental hygiene in Spain, seeCampos and González de Pablo (2016) andCampos (1997). On Mexico, see RíosMolina (2013), and on the Argentine case, seeDagfal (2015) andKlappenbach (1999). This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.…”

“…7On mental hygiene in Spain, see Campos and González de Pablo (2016) and Campos (1997). On Mexico, see Ríos Molina (2013), and on the Argentine case, see Dagfal (2015) and Klappenbach (1999). …”

Meanings of Waves: Electroencephalography and Society in Mexico City, 1940–1950

“… 8 On the content and context of this first Mexican biotypological project, see Quiroz Cuarón, Gómez Robleda, and Argüelles Medina (1939), Stern (2000, 86), and Ríos Molina (2013, 147). …”