Abstract

GUTIERREZ AVENDANO, JAIRO. Mens sana in corpore sano: incorporation of mental hygiene into public health during the first half of the 20th century in Colombia. Hist. Caribe [online]. 2019, vol.14, n.34, pp.91-121. ISSN 0122-8803.  https://doi.org/10.15648/hc.34.2019.3.

The present article aims to understand the appropriations and scientific transpositions between mental hygiene as a technical solution and eugenics as ideology, in the emergence of the concept of mental health in the middle of the 20th century in Colombia. Methodology: inscribed in the current of social history of science, a documentary research was carried out, by means of heuristics of archives and hermeneutics. Conclusions: the predominance of hereditary propensity as a determinant of degeneration, over environmental factors, had discursive and practical transpositions in eugenics, extended to three fields: hygiene (physical, mental and moral), puericulture or maternal-child care and homiculture to "work the body and reap the man". Mental hygiene was a technical solution to prevent and remedy the decline of the race that was attributed to the civilization backlog in which the country was plunged, a historical background that characterized the emergence of the incorporation of psychic care in the public health agenda in Colombia and Latin America.

Keywords : Mental hygiene; mental health; eugenics; degeneration; insanity.

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