Menninger, William Claire 1899-1966

MENNINGER, WILLIAM CLAIRE 1899-1966

Advocate for mental-health treatment

Contributions to Psychiatry

Psychiatry was a field few American medical practitioners knew much about in the 1940s. There was a widespread notion that psychiatry was either hilariously funny or sacrilegious or maybe even subversive. The popularization of Freudian psychoanalysis in the United States contributed to this perception. William Claire Menninger greatly contributed to a new perspective on psychiatry in the United States and to the rapid development of the field. Because of the large number of psychiatric problems and casualties in the U.S. Army during World War II, Surgeon General Norman T. Kirk declared psychiatry equal to medicine and surgery, and in December 1943 he appointed Brig. Gen. William Menninger as director of the Neuropsychiatry Consultants Division. As Menninger directed the expansion of the army's psychiatric work, his good-humored personality and professional ability helped him break down many of the walls of suspicion and hostility against psychiatry and improved the military's handling of soldiers with mental problems. He greatly expanded the United States Army's Neuropsychiatric Division and publicized the need for greater mental-health treatment to the American public.

The "Mayo Clinic of Psychiatry."

Menninger received his M.D. from Cornell University in 1924, then interned at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He, his father, Charles Frederick Menninger, and brother, Karl Augustus Menninger, cofounded the famed Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, in 1920. After his internship he joined his father and brother at their clinic. Known to many as the "Mayo Clinic of Psychiatry," the Menninger Clinic greatly influenced psychiatric practice in America. At the time of its founding it was the largest training center for psychiatrists in the world.

Improving Army Psychiatry in World War II

When World War II broke out, Menninger joined the army as a neuropsychiatric consultant. Alarmed at the high percentage (39 percent) of men rejected for military service because of personality disorders and the high rate of neuropsychiatric discharges, Menninger markedly improved army psychiatry during the war. As chief of the Neuropsychiatrie Consultants Division in the Office of the Surgeon General, Menninger broke down "many walls of hostility and suspicion against psychiatry that impeded proper treatment of mental cases in military service." To make up for the shortage of trained psychiatrists during the war, Menninger's division created special intensive three-month courses for young army doctors.

Recognizing the Importance of Treatment

One of Menninger's greatest contributions to mental health and psychiatry called for the recognition of the importance of mental hygiene. "Many Army misfits could have been prevented," wrote Menninger, "if there had been greater use of psychiatric and mental hygiene services in the educational system of the country." He once summed up his attitude toward psychiatry and mental illness: "The problem is to convince people that emotional disturbances do exist, that they are a kind of sickness and that they can be helped by psychiatry. Too often people can't understand the nature of their problem.…It never occurs to them they have an emotional disease." His work with the military and his publicity of the importance of psychiatry and mental hygiene helped lead to changes in public perceptions of mental health and psychiatry. In recognition of his "outstanding service in the field of mental hygiene," he was awarded an Albert Lasker Award in 1944. Many regard the Lasker Award as the American equivalent of a Nobel Prize. Menninger was an active author whose books published during the 1940s were Psychiatry in a Troubled World: Yesterday's War and Today's Challenge (Macmillan, 1948) and Psychiatry, Its Evolution and Present Status (Cornell University Press, 1948).

Sources:

"Dr. William Claire Menninger Dies; President of Psychiatric Clinic," New York Times (7 September 1966): 1+;

William Claire Menninger, "The Mentally or Emotionally Handicapped Veteran," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (May 1945).