The publication of this work resulted in a public outcry in the 1900's that began an inquiry into the state of U.S. mental health care and psychiatric services. It contributed significantly to the mental hygiene movement and to establish the National Committee for Mental Hygiene

Norman Dain offers a compelling biography of Clifford W. Beers, whose lifelong battle against his own mental illness inspired him to become a champion for mental health. Beers' autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself, created a public outcry in 1908, as it chronicled Beers' experiences during his three-year confinement in an asylum. Despite his disability, Beers went on to found the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (now the National Association for Mental Health), the American Foundation for Mental Hygiene, and the International Committee for Mental Hygiene.

In the groundbreaking book, Clifford Beers tells what it was like to be institutionalized at a time when mental illness received little attention or respect. "A Mind that Found Itself" is Beers' own story, as one of five children who all suffered psychological distress and were all confined to mental institutions at one time or another. Beers, who wrote the book after his own confinement, gained the support of the medical profession and was a leader in the mental hygiene movement. "A Mind that Found Itself" has been an inspiration to many mental health professionals in their choice of a profession. It also did much to help the rest of the world see mental health issues as a serious disease. "A Mind that Found Itself" is an excellent read for anyone seeking to better understand, or treat, mental illness.

A Mind That Found Itself An Autobiography By Clifford Whittingham Beers Documents the Abuse of Mental Patients This story is derived from as human a document as ever existed; and, because of its uncommon nature, perhaps no one thing contributes so much to its value as its authenticity. It is an autobiography, and more: in part it is a biography; for, in telling the story of my life, I must relate the history of another self—a self which was dominant from my twenty-fourth to my twenty-sixth year. During that period I was unlike what I had been, or what I have been since. The biographical part of my autobiography might be called the history of a mental civil war, which I fought single-handed on a battlefield that lay within the compass of my skull. An Army of Unreason, composed of the cunning and treacherous thoughts of an unfair foe, attacked my bewildered consciousness with cruel persistency, and would have destroyed me, had not a triumphant Reason finally interposed a superior strategy that saved me from my unnatural self. I am not telling the story of my life just to write a book. I tell it because it seems my plain duty to do so. A narrow escape from death and a seemingly miraculous return to health after an apparently fatal illness are enough to make a man ask himself: For what purpose was my life spared? That question I have asked myself, and this book is, in part, an answer. I was born shortly after sunset about thirty years ago. My ancestors, natives of England, settled in this country not long after the Mayflower first sailed into Plymouth Harbor. And the blood of these ancestors, by time and the happy union of a Northern man and a Southern woman—my parents—has perforce been blended into blood truly American.

At once a classic account of the ravages of mental illness and a major American autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself tells the story of a young man who is gradually enveloped by a psychosis. His well-meaning family commits him to a series of mental hospitals, but he is brutalized by the treatment, and his moments of fleeting sanity become fewer and fewer. His ultimate recovery is a triumph of the human spirit. Clifford Whittingham Beers, 1876-1943, was the American founder of the mental hygiene movement, born in New Haven, Conn., grad. Sheffield Scientific School, Yale, 1897. After the publication of this book, A Mind That Found Itself (1908), which is an autobiographical account of his confinement in a mental institution, he had the support of the medical profession and others in the work to prevent mental disorders. He was a leader in the field until his retirement in 1939. This book is an amazing account of what it was like to be institutionalized at a time when mental illness received little attention or respect. A groundbreaking effort towards the acceptance of mental health as a serious disease.