Clifford Whittingham Beers

Clifford Whittingham Beers (1876 - 1943) was the founder of the American mental hygiene movement.

Beers was born in New Haven, Connecticut and graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale in 1897. In 1900 he was confined to a mental institution for depression and paranoia, where he experienced and witnessed serious maltreatment at the hands of the staff. After the publication of A Mind That Found Itself (1908), an autobiographical account of his hospitalization, he gained the support of the medical profession and others in the work to prevent mental disorders. In 1909 Beers founded the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, now named Mental Health America, in order to reform the treatment of the mentally ill. He also started the Clifford Beers Clinic in New Haven in 1913, the first outpatient mental health clinic in the United States. He was a leader in the field until his retirement in 1939.