1930's Medicine and Health | Morale: The Mental Hygiene of Unemployment

Pamphlet

By: George K. Pratt, M.D.

Date: 1933

Source: Pratt, George K. Morale: The Mental Hygiene of Unemployment. New York: The National Committee for Mental Hygiene, 1933, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

About the Author: George K. Pratt, a physician who specialized in mental disorders, wrote various popular books on mental hygiene, including Your Mind and You. Pratt contributed to the government's efforts to fight all effects of the Great Depression by writing this pamphlet, which acknowledged that economic hardship affected people's mental health.

Introduction

The Great Depression of the 1930s was not the first such economic downturn in U.S. history, but it was the first to occur in an era when the mental health of average people was taken seriously. The "mental hygiene" movement promoted the idea that people could, through a combination of...