Clifford Whittingham Beers was the founder of the American mental hygiene movement, who based his campaign on his own experience with mental illness.
Background
Clifford Beers was born on March 30, 1876, in New Haven, Connecticut, where his father, Robert Anthony Beers, a native of New York state, earned a modest living in the produce business. His mother, Ida (Cooke) Beers, was born in Savannah, Georgia. Clifford was the fifth of six sons (one of whom died in infancy). To his knowledge none of his ancestors, who were English, or their American descendants suffered from mental disorder, though there was much eccentricity on his mother's side. Information about his childhood is sparse. His mother appears to have been emotionally withdrawn, his father gentle and somewhat ineffective; he was evidently left to the special care of an aunt.
Education
In 1894, after attending local public schools, Clifford entered Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School. That year his next oldest brother was fatally stricken by what was thought to be epilepsy. Beers was obsessed with fear of a similar fate before and after his graduation, Ph. B. , in 1897.
Career
A few years later after graduation, while working for a New York City business firm, he suffered a mental breakdown and tried to commit suicide. From August 1900 to September 1903 he spent most of his time in three Connecticut mental hospitals - Stamford Hall, the Hartford Retreat (later called the Instituteof Living), and the Connecticut State Hospital at Middletown - before he was pronounced improved and was released. The indignities and actual violence which Beers and other patients endured at the hands of attendants in these institutions determined him to formulate plans for their reform. After his release he returned to the business world, intending to establish himself financially and socially before embarking on the career of reformer, but he became impatient and then excited and late in 1904 was persuaded to commit himself again to the Hartford Retreat, where he stayed for most of January 1905.
Shortly thereafter Beers wrote A Mind That Found Itself, a vivid account of his illness and an exposition of his program to transform mental hospitals from essentially custodial institutions into therapeutic ones. Published in 1908, the book created a sensation. It received wide acclaim in the general and scientific press and stimulated hundreds of persons to write to Beers of its profound effect upon them. Convinced that his book alone would not impel reform, Beers turned to organizational work, for which he proved singularly gifted. With the advice of the psychiatrist Adolf Meyer and the support of Dr. William H. Welch of Johns Hopkins, the philosopher William James, and other prominent men, Beers established the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene in 1908 as a demonstration project. Its purposes were both preventive and remedial: to work for the prevention of mental disorders and defects and to raise standards of care for the mentally ill.
The Connecticut example inspired the formation of similar organizations throughout the United States and Canada, and in February 1909 Beers founded the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, with headquarters in New York City, to initiate and coordinate reform on a national scale. His wife helped him in his work. Intense, clever, talkative, witty, dark eyes flashing out of a swarthy face, he was able to persuade wealthy persons to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to the National Committee. These funds, together with millions in foundation grants and the talents of the outstanding executives and experts whom the indefatigable Beers recruited, enabled the committee to achieve and maintain for several decades undisputed leadership and influence in practically every aspect of the mental health field, including popular and professional education, research, and treatment.
Beers's domineering, compulsive personality, however, created difficulties. As secretary of the National Committee and of a number of other organizations that he set up, he insisted on the right to oversee their activities, a demand that brought him into conflict with the committee's medical chiefs. In 1922, frustrated by this opposition, he decided to shift his main effort to international work. He originated the idea of the First International Congress for Mental Hygiene, for which he raised the money. Held in Washington, D. C. , in May 1930, the meeting was attended by some 3, 500 representatives from fifty-three nations and resulted in the formation of the International Committee for Mental Hygiene.
During numerous trips abroad Beers enjoyed recognition everywhere as the founder and leader of the modern mental hygiene movement. He received many honors, some of which he actively sought, he said, for the prestige they reflected upon his cause; among the latter was the French government's naming him a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Meanwhile Beers had continued as secretary of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene. By 1934, however, glaucoma and arteriosclerosis forced him to reduce his workload. A few years later the committee had to curtail its programs because of a shrinkage of funds. Called upon to resume fund raising, for which he feared he no longer had the energy or self-confidence, Beers became depressed and suspicious and finally committed himself in June 1939 to Butler Hospital, Providence, Rhode Island. He died there a few years later of bronchial pneumonia, some months after suffering a cerebral thrombosis, and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, New Haven.
In the large scope of his efforts Beers modeled himself after the industrial tycoons of the day, whom he greatly admired. Unlike Dorothea Dix, with whom he is best compared, Beers could collaborate with others, despite his tendency to dominate. Intense, clever, talkative, witty, dark eyes flashing out of a swarthy face, he was able to persuade wealthy persons to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to the his committee. Indeed, his accomplishments outlasted those of Dix, for he was able to enlist some of the most talented men of his day in a movement that survived the death of its originator.
Interests
Only when Beers was almost sixty did he take up a hobby, oil painting.
Connections
On June 27, 1912, Clifford Beers was married to Clara Louise Jepson of New Haven, a childhood friend. They had no children for fear of transmitting a susceptibility to the mental illness that had struck Beers and by 1912 his younger brother.