From mental hygiene to mental health: ideology, discourses and practices in Franco’s Spain (1939–75)

Abstract

Based on an analysis of the discourses, the ideological appropriation and the practical influence of mental hygiene in Spanish psychiatry during the early years of the Francoist regime, this article examines its decline and subsequent replacement by the new concept of mental health promoted by the World Health Organization and other international bodies from the mid-twentieth century. The old approach, essentially focused on the prophylaxis of insanity within the framework of a set of interventionist policies of social defence, was thus transformed from the beginning of the 1960s into a much more ambitious and comprehensive project which sought to promote the psychosocial balance and performance of individuals in the context of increasingly socialized health-related discourses and networks of care.

“The Faustian spirit of the technical world”. Mental illness and cultural criticism in Franco’s Spain

“…81-111) had an impact in the field of psychiatric discourses and practices. Thus, the new mental health rhetoric from the English speaking world began to permeate the doctrinal production of many Spanish psychiatrists (Novella and Campos, 2017), while, on the other hand, authors with links to the health administration carried out a series of initiatives in the domain of training and the structure and management of care institutions (Novella, 2019;Simón Lorda, 2020). In a context marked by "developmentalism" and technocratic authoritarianism, it was logical that warnings about the (alleged) evils of the technical-scientific worldview of modernity would no longer have a significant place among the concerns of the already declining conservative psychiatric essay writing tradition 20 .…”

“…Vallejo Nágera's fervent musings on "Hispanic eugenics" and López Ibor's more subtle disquisitions on Spaniards' "inferiority complex" (Cayuela, 2015, pp. 134-146) are also worth noting here, as well as the various attempts to "adapt" psychotherapy and the postulates of mental hygiene to the premises and cultural particularities and psychology of the "Spanish man" (González Duro, 1997;Novella, 2016;Novella and Campos, 2017).…”

Mental Health

“…Importantly, ideas of mental illness have also emerged in contexts of colonisation and decolonisation (Reyes-Foster 2018;Calabrese 2013; see also Fanon 1963). The historical precursor to the concept of mental health has been traced back to the efforts of the 'mental hygiene movement' that took shape in Europe and America during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Bertolote 2008;Novella and Campos 2017). The idea of 'mental hygiene' gained traction in the second half of the nineteenth century and is often credited to the work of William Sweetser (1797-1875, who defined it as the science of preserving a healthy mind (Sweetser 1850).…”

Influence of Ideological and Political Education on Mental Health of College Students Under Media Convergence

“…The healthy psychology of students, if available, plays a positive effect on their overall development and competence in solving problems (Mossberg, 2016;Ikwuka, Galbraith, Manktelow et al, 2016). Positive psychological quality can also promote the students' health and growth, help create a harmonious campus environment, and do good to the social stable development (Hansen, 2006, Novella & Campos, 2017. Students as talents reserved in society contribute to the advancement of society.…”