Home > Encyclopedia of Psychology > Clifford Beers

1876-1943
American reformer and founder of the mental hygiene movement.

Clifford Whittingham Beers was born in New Haven, Connecticut, studied at Yale University, and began a professional career in the insurance industry. In 1900 he was institutionalized for a mental breakdown after a suicide attempt and diagnosed as manic-depressive. Confined to both public and private institutions over a three-year period, Beers found the treatment of mental patients inhumane and ineffective. When his efforts to complain directly to hospital administrators were ignored, Beers smuggled letters out to state officials, and his efforts met with some success. By 1903 Beers was able to return to his career, but continued to work on behalf of reforming the treatment of the mentally ill.

In 1908 Beers published A Mind That Found Itself, a popular autobiographical study of his confinement and recovery, which...