ABSTRACT
The Mental Health Course at the London School of Economics has changed its acknowledged aims over the years, but it has never been concerned solely with training psychiatric social workers as such. Selection for the Mental Health Course in particular has always been subject to a fairly extensive mythology. It has been held, for example, that it is extremely difficult to get a place on the course. The number of students was small as was the membership of the group of early enthusiasts responsible for the first course of training in 1929. The impetus for training for social workers in the principles of mental hygiene came largely from those interested in children, but developments in the mental hospital field enabled psychiatrists and administrators primarily concerned with the treatment of adults to co-operate in a common training for workers in both child guidance clinics and mental hospitals.
