Some Social Aspects of Mental Hygiene. Edited by Frankwood E. Williams.  The American Academy of Political and Social Science, Philadelphia. 1930. Pp.  214.

Compiled from the results of the studies and ideas of a host of physicians and educators, whose interests have turned toward mental hygiene, the book includes a large variety of aspects of this world-wide movement for the betterment of mankind.

Part I deals with the general aspects of mental hygiene which includes comments on eugenic sterilization, preventive medicine, social adjustment of the feebleminded and psychopathic, by American, English and German authors. It also contains an interesting study of runaway children by a psychiatric social worker who has presented several important facts.

Part II comprises a group of discussions on mental hygiene in education and in mercantile life. Herein the problems of college administration, emotional tangles among college students and the rôle of psychiatry in educational problems receive due consideration. Moreover, the school child with its special difficulties, the problem child, the superior child and the mentally defective have been discussed in a brief, but succinct manner by those who are in a position to do so authoritatively.

Part III is concerned with institutional treatment and community organization. Child guidance problems, control of feebleminded, public health nursing and various extramural activities of mental hospitals are considered in their various relationships.

The topics are well enough classified and additional references offered to make the book valuable as a reference to mental hygiene activities, and the ground covered is so extensive that an ordinary review is inadequate to give a comprehensive impression of its scope. The book should be read particularly by psychologists, teachers and social workers who are constantly in contact with community problems.

Lewis