The American mental hygiene movement was a reformist movement characteristic of the Progressive Era that sought to develop and apply psychiatry, psychology, and social work to alleviate the problems of modernity. Its advocates defined mental health as the individual's adjustment to the social environment. According to its perspective, social problems could be solved either by increasing the adaptive skills of individuals or through social engineering. In this Ph.D. dissertation, the researcher investigates the interaction between these ideas, professional intervention strategies and practices, and cultural ideas about what constitutes mental health. The institutional basis for the mental hygiene movement was the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, which was founded in 1909. The NCMH coordinated professional activities, maintained connections with large philanthropies to organize funding, and disseminated its perspective within the professions and society at large. The interests of the NCMH moved from a concern with mental illness to its prevention; then the broadening of the scope of prevention to include social maladjustment; and finally, the promotion of adjustment or mental health. These ideals of mental health both reflected cultural ideals of masculinity, citizenship, and normality, and reinforced them by their presentation in the neutral language of science and through the professional practices it developed. M
