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Light
on the Law
To a remarkable extent, the GAP
reports were not only widely read, but widely used. They
were, in general, truly action documents, put to effective
use not only by psychiatrists and psychiatric organizations,
but by medical schools, psychology and social work departments
and agencies, governmental bodies, courts, industrial plants,
public schools, community health and welfare agencies, etc.
One of GAP's most influential committees was that on Psychiatry
and the Law (originally called the Committee on Forensic Psychiatry).
Its first published report, Commitment Procedures
(GAP Report No. 4, April 1948)< helped to modernize existing
laws and regulations in many states and localities. Its
second report, :Psychiatrically Deviated Sex Offenders
(GAP Report No. 9, February 1950), was widely praised as the
clearest statement of that complex problem to appear in recent
years. The report embodied, in essence, the advanced thinking
of the foremost contemporary experts on the subject, making
clear distinctions between morality and the law, and has been
quoted repeatedly in lawyers' briefs and court opinions.
Even more influential, perhaps, was its third report,
Criminal Responsibility and Psychiatric Expert Testimony
(GAP Report No. 26, May 1954), which was cited as a basic document
in the famous Durham opinion drawn up by Judge David L. Bazelon
of the U.S. Court of Appeals, which overthrew the century-old
McNaghten right-and-wrong rule in federal courts
in favor of modern scientific interpretations of human behavior.
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Psychiatry
and Socials Issues
Soon after the U.S. Supreme Court
rendered its classic decision on school integration in 1954,
the GAP Committee on Social Issues started on an extensive and
intensive study of psychiatric aspects of the problems of racial
desegregation in communities affected by the historic opinion.
Consultations were held with educators, sociologists, anthropologists,
authorities on public administration, race relations experts,
and others over a period of more than three years. Members
of the GAP committee made personal observations in localities
facing the integration problem. Finally, in May, 1957,
after many drafts and revisions, GAP Report No. 37, Psychiatric
Aspects of School Desegregation, was published.
It was a sober exposition of expert insights, and included many
useful recommendations for civic leaders seeking to introduce
school integration with the least possible friction. It
has become a veritable handbook on human relations in many communities.
The GAP
report came in for bitter attack from some extreme segregationists
in certain areas of the deep South, but elsewhere it won high
praise for its moderation and soundness. A school superintendent
in a community moving from segregation to integration congratulated
the Committee on a magnificent job in an area about which
very little is known, and made the following characteristic
comment: It will give some of us who are deeply
involved in this problem supporting material that we have been
searching for.
Some years
earlier, in GAP Report No. 13 (July 1950), the Committee on
Social Issues had drawn up a thought-provoking document entitled
The Social Responsibility of Psychiatry: A Statement of
Orientation.
The establishment
by GAP of a Committee on Social Issues, the report stated,
carried with it the tacit admission of the principle that the
psychiatrist has a pertinent role in the study of social problems.
A considerable part of the report was devoted to a discussion
of relationships between personality and society, leading to
a suggestion that concepts of psychiatry be broadened
in the following directions :
- Redefinition
of the concept of mental illness, emphasizing those dynamic
principles which pertain to the person's interaction with
society.
- Examination
of the social factors which contribute to the causation of
mental illness, and also influence its course and outcome.
- Consideration
of the dynamic processes of intra-and intergroup relations.
- Consideration
of the specific group-psychological phenomena which are relevant,
in a positive sense, to community mental health.
- The development
of criteria for healthy and pathological patterns of social
organization.
- The development
of criteria for social action, relevant to the promotion of
individual and communal mental health.
One of the
most active GAP committees has been that on Psychiatry and Social
Work, which produced several important reports, now used widely
in social work schools and agencies. Its first two reports
outlined the role of the psychiatric social worker in the psychiatric
hospital and the psychiatric clinic (GAP Reports No. 2, January
1948, and No. 16, September 1950, respectively). Its third
(GAP Report No. 34, March 1956) outlined the functions of the
consultant psychiatrist in a family service agency. The
GAP Committee on Hospitals, through its series of reports and
through the radiating activities of its individual members,
played a significant role in the sharp rise in mental hospital
standards during the past dozen years. Incidentally, it
was while Dr. Kenneth E. Appel was chairman of this committee
that he conceived his idea of a Flexner Report for
psychiatry.* As a result, the Commission on
Mental Health and Mental Illness was established by Congressional
act in 1955, with authority to make a sweeping survey of the
field during a three-year period. A sum of $1,250,000
was appropriated for the purpose. It is interesting that
the three top officers of this important commission were GAP
members: Dr. Jack R. Ewalt as director, Dr. Appel as president,
and Dr. Leo H. Bartemeier as chairman of the board.
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