Clifford (Whittingham) Beers

Founder of the mental hygiene movement, born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Trained as a scientist at Yale, he was confined to hospital after a mental breakdown (1900–3). As a result of indignities and violence he experienced, he was determined to reform the mental health system. His book, The Mind That Found Itself (1908), created a sensation, calling for a true therapeutic approach to mental illness instead of just custodial care. That year he also founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene and in 1909 founded the National Commission for Mental Hygiene, which under his lifelong leadership became an international movement that would have a major impact on every aspect of mental health care. Much of what he advocated would come to be accepted practice, and he was greatly honoured in his lifetime for his pioneering work.

Clifford Whittingham Beers (1876 - 1943) was the founder of the American mental hygiene movement.

He was born in New Haven, Connecticut and graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale in 1897. After the publication of "A Mind That Found Itself" (1908), an autobiographical account of his confinement in a mental institution for depression and paranoia, he had the support of the medical profession and others in the work to prevent mental disorders.