Show IA A MIND THAT FOUND ITSELF By Dale Dal Carnegie One of the most Important movements ever initiated was started by a man who had been incarcerated for three years yean in inan an insane asylum um I This man was Clifford Beers and the movement he started i was to help the mentally Ill Ill- I or the called so-called insane He grad grad- graduated from Yale University Then one day back in 1900 things went wrong no use living liv liv- living ing So he attempted suicide by I lumping humping I byI from a high building The insane asylum to which he was sent was nothing more nor less than a place to keep those I who could have nothing to say about what was done with them in those For an insane man I IFor days was just a crazy person to tobe tobe be thrust out of the world of liv living i ling ing people as a hopeless hunk of I flesh Most of us can look back j j to tl our childhood at al some un unfortunate for being who was the towns town's crazy man or woman And what a pathetic creature we wei sew sw shunned perhaps even laughed at by the ignorant i In the old type of asylum pa pa- pa patients patients were treated not only un un- un unkindly kindly but often cruelly par par- ti if they became rebel rebel- rebellious lious No one thought they had any feeling no one believed that they really knew what was hap hap- happening happening pening to them But Clifford Beers discovered that they knew a great deal about what was hap hap- pending to them and that often the very knowledge made them rebellious And he claimed that bad treatment augmented their fear aggravated their Illness Just what did he do to cause public to change entirely the at at- at attitude attitude toward the insane Well first he gave cave gave proof of his own cure by going Into business and succeeding And this re re- re remember remember I member was after alter a year three-year period of being confined as crazy crazy Next he wrote a book called A Mind That Found Itself and this book made people sit up and think In it he told of his own sufferings and his rational moments during his confine confine- confinement ment when he realized what had happened to him He told of f iti i the cruel c treatment e often it accord accord- accorded r ed him and how that had tended to make him worse Then he founded a society for forthe forthe the mentally ill called a Society for Mental Hygiene ene This society had preventative as its goal not only tive and curative measures but urged that an effort be made to raise the standard of care of people peo peo- people who were sick mentally In all aU his work he constantly stress- stress stressed stressed ed Hio that the V mentally man ill should I be looked upon u on just as were the physically ill ift with the thought I always of curing them This led to a National Committee being formed with Mr Beers at its head h ad The superb movement has pro pro- progressed gressed greased and now we know thank God that most people who go off oU balance are not hope hope- less hopeless cases that many of them re re- re recover re- re recover cover just a readily as a man re re- re recovers covers from a broken leg I wonder how many of those unfortunate people of our youth might have recovered and be be- be become become come useful citizens had Clifford Beers lived one hundred years earlier ear lIer |