MENTAL DISEASES. These are dis eases which show themselves in alteration of conduct or behavior. They are faulty adjust ments within the individual which, due to faulty mental functioning, interfere with social value mutually agreed upon by. particular group. large or small. Such faulty mental functioning may be brought about by a vast variety of causes and be contributed to by a variety of defects or disturbances in many parts of the body. Mental disease may come and go. just as any other type of disease, and mental dis ease may be due, most frequently is due, tc, disorders primarily located in other parts of the body than the brain, although a mental disease means that the guiding function of the body as a whole, i.e., the mental function ing, is disturbed by faulty brain A disease, therefore, only means that the adjustment of the individual as a whole,— the personality,— to his social environment is sufficiently disturbed to interfere with the well being of that personality. It is primarily be cause such faulty adjustment tends to exclude the sick individual from his fellow-men,— the group or socius,— that mental disease is so much feared by the individual and is looked upon with dread and superstitious awe by the folk in general. In general it may be said that there are two aspects or trends of behavior ex hibited by the individual in his reactions to his environment, conscious and the unconscious, and so there are two attitudes to be reckoned with in problems of mental disorders. If a man's tongue is cut out he cannot speak, and there are times when he apparently cannot speak, even though he has a whole tongue Maybe his muscles are paralyzed. That may be due to some change either in the nerve path ways leading to or from the brain which per mit speech, or in the part of the brain to which these nerve pathways lead or in some other part. An attempt has been made to locate the part of the nervous system affected by means of the behavior of the man who cannot speak, both his actions in the use of his voice and his other actions. For, because of the close inter relation of all parts of the human being, cer tain types and groups of behavior will generally be found connected, as for instance if a man's inability to speak is due to some affection of the nerves between tongue and brain, there will be certain other physical symptoms, but if it is due to an improperly functioning centre in the brain, some other anatomically more distant activity will be affected. Thus a morbid area at the periphery might affect only one nerve, but if nearer to the centre it might affect two or more nerves, while directly at the centre it might affect all the nerves emanating from that centre and the aetivies regulated by them.
Human behavior is not merely physical, but is also mental, while the means we have of per ceiving that behavior are exclusively physical. That is, the expression of some other person's mind can be reported to me only through the physical actions of other person as perceived by me. From this it appears that the diseases known as mental may be the beginning of a process which starts in purely mental conditions or the end of one which starts in purely somatic conditions. Physical traumata may indeed be
the result of a lack of co-ordination due to de fects of nerve function which in turn may be due to a mental conflict. Adler has brought out the fact that a very unfortunate series of physical injuries to the eye of one patient were the result of a maladaptation in co-ordination of such a nature that the reflex actions that generally operate to protect the eye did not work in this case. From this he deduces his theory of organ inferiority, an interesting corollary to some of the theories of the analytic psychology. For if the nervous consti tution of this patient did not permit the usual reactions he would not necessarily be awkward because of an unconscious wish, as is the sup position of the majority of psychoanalysts. If a mental disease is an end product of a chain of bodily causes, which have been acting for some time, it is most likely that some or all of them will have manifested themselves be fore the time of the manifestation of the men tal disease, and that the . presence of these somatic symptoms will be associated with the mental disease and regarded as its causes. But if, on the other hand, the mental disease is itself the beginning and not the end of the process, it will require much more subtle tests to discover it, particularly in its earlier stages. It will be, too, of the utmost importance to detect, as early as possible, these beginnings which are manifested both in mental and in physical behavior, in order that remedial or preventive measures may be adopted at the earliest possible moment. In mental as in dis eases of other bodily functions it is the pre ventive measures that are the most productive of good results. The greatest strides in making a decrease in mental diseases, as well as in those disorders thought of as bodily not greatly affecting the mental functions, come from taking the disorder in hand as soon as possi ble. Thus it would be most desirable to have teachers in all schools equipped with a means of detecting very early those early signs of later mental disorders which, although at present extremely elusive, are yet gradually, day by day, becoming clearer through analysis. Those in charge of the young should be the first to observe signs of a possible subsequent mental weakness, even in children apparently normal, and should be in a position to advise parents and guardians how to offset the dele terious factors in the child's environment. It is furthermore increasingly clear in what man ner the overloading of the nervous system can produce not only mental disease, but, through the effect of the conflict between psychical re quirements and physical constitution (an effect which is believed to take place in the nerve cells themselves), this overloading of the nervous system produces disorders in the physiological processes, and may therefore in the end pro duce what has been called an organic disease, namely, an alteration in the mode of working of one or more organs of the body, a condi tion which sooner or later undermines the gen eral health.