Mens sana in corpore sano: Incorporation of mental hygiene into public health during the first half of the 20th century in Colombia

Abstract

The present article aims to understand the appropriations and scientific transpositions between mental hygiene as a technical solution and eugenics as ideology, in the emergence of the concept of mental health in the middle of the 20th century in Colombia. Methodology: inscribed in the current of social history of science, a documentary research was carried out, by means of heuristics of archives and hermeneutics. Conclusions: the predominance of hereditary propensity as a determinant of degeneration, over environmental factors, had discursive and practical transpositions in eugenics, extended to three fields: hygiene (physical, mental and moral), puericulture or maternal-child care and homiculture to "work the body and reap the man". Mental hygiene was a technical solution to prevent and remedy the decline of the race that was attributed to the civilization backlog in which the country was plunged, a historical background that characterized the emergence of the incorporation of psychic care in the public health agenda in Colombia and Latin America.