ABSTRACT
Psychiatrists have had a big task in changing the care and treatment of mentally ill persons from mechanical restraints to a human and humane method. The basic assumption is that the mental health of the individual is held down in the area of infant-care and child-care and both infant- and child-care reappear in the social worker’s casework. All the rest of mental illness belongs to the build-up of the personality in childhood and in infancy, along with the environmental provision that fails or succeeds in its function of facilitating the maturational processes of the individual. The depressions constitute a very wide concept of mental disorder. Health is emotional maturity, maturity at age; and mental ill-health always has behind it a hold-up of emotional development. A mental breakdown is a ‘healthy’ sign in that it implies a capacity of the individual to use an environment that has become available in order to re-establish an existence on a basis that feels real.
