National Association of Mental Health

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National Association of Mental Health (UK)

Montagu Norman had been Governor of the Bank of England for many years. His right hand man was Otto Niemeyer. They sponsored the National Council of Mental Hygiene being re-founded as the British National Association for Mental Health, mainly due to the subject of eugenics becoming heavily associated with the Nazis.

"Especially since the last world war we have done much to infiltrate the various social organisations throughout the country, and in their work and in their point of view one can see clearly how the principles for which this society and others stood in the past have become accepted as part of the ordinary working plan of these various bodies. That is as it should be, and while we can take heart from this we must be healthily discontented and realise that there is still more work to be done along this line. Similarly we have made a useful attack upon a number of professions. The two easiest of them naturally are the teaching profession and the Church: the two most difficult are law and medicine... If we are to infiltrate the professional and social activities of other people I think we must imitate the Totalitarians and organise some kind of fifth column activity!" _{John Rawlings Rees M.D. Address to the Annual Meeting of the National Council for Mental Hygiene June 18th 1940}

Recommendations had been put forward by Lord Feversham in the week that World War II broke out, that the Central Association for Mental Welfare; The National Council for Mental Hygiene and the Mental After Care-Association should amalgamate into one Association. So, for the duration of the war a Provisional Association for Mental Health was formed under the Chairmanship of Lady Norman.

From meetings at Thorpe Lodge, the home of the Montagu and Priscilla Norman, the National Association for Mental Health became a reality and the framework for similar changes to take place in the rest of the world. Otto Niemeyer (a Director of the Bank of England) was made Treasurer.

Upon the invitation of the NAMH, the international Committee for Mental Hygiene held a congress at the Ministry of Health in London, where it formally established itself under the new name, World Federation for Mental Health - WFMH. It became the international co-ordinator for national Mental Health and Mental Hygiene groups in many countries of the world, and besides a new name, the meeting initiated a change in the direction of its activities.

The congress at which the WFMH was inaugurated was the Third International Congress on Mental Health.

According to the association's official history: The National Association for Mental Health was established in 1946 by the merging of three major mental health organisations. These were:

the Central Association for Mental Welfare (established in 1913) - led by the pioneering Dame Evelyn Fox, this organisation worked through local groups of volunteers to help mentally handicapped people
the National Council for Mental Hygiene (established in 1922), which had a strongly educational bias and stressed the social causes of mental illness
the Child Guidance Council (established in 1927), which set up the first child guidance clinics and launched training courses for their staff.

In 1969, the Scientologists branded orthodox psychiatry as a system of murder, sexual perversion and monstrous cruelty, and the NAMH as a criminally motivated 'psychiatric front group'. In October 1969, a number of Scientologists applied for membership of the Association, and it became apparent that they were trying to take over. Their membership was withdrawn and, after a court case, the matter was resolved in the Association's favour. Mary Applebey, who was director from 1951 to 1974, said, perhaps rather generously, in a speech for Mind's 30th birthday in November 1976, "Scientology represented in an exaggerated form one aspect of disillusionment with the official mental health line".

In 1972, the name 'MIND' was adopted. (From the nineties, the lower case 'Mind' has been used.)

Mind, "The Mental Health Charity" is now a registered charity: #219830.