How Adolf Myer Assissted Mentally Ill with Theory of Occupational Therapy

In the late 19th century, large institutional asylums were inundated with patients and there was insufficient financial support from the government to properly operate these hospitals. As a result, there was no time to provide individualized treatment for each patient suffering with mental illness and many were incarcerated. The 19th century zeitgeist, viewed the mentally ill as feeble minded, incapable of functioning in society, and unhygienic. Also, Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” led to a lack of social commitment to promote moral treatment for the mentally ill. During the early 20th century, a diverse group of professionals in North America including Adolf Meyer emphasized the importance of a moral treatment approach to promote caring characteristics for ill and disabled people. In particular, Meyer created the psychobiology theory which became one of the most insightful and significant approaches to understanding mental illness. Meyer believed that humans are best understood when you take into consideration their daily activities over the lifespan, thus creating the paradigm known as Occupational Therapy (Kielhofner, 2009, p. 17).

Personal & Professional Life

Adolf Meyer was born on September 13th, 1866 in Switzerland in a small Village called Niederwenigen and was the son of a Zwinglian minister (Scull & Schulkin, 2009, para.1). According to Lidz (1966), Meyer’s grandfather was a follower of a Swiss folk philosopher named Jakob Gujer better known as Kleinjogg (p. 323). The Meyer family intermarried with the Gujers, eventually buying a farm (Lidz, p. 323). The Meyer’s adopted Kleinjogg’s instrumental approach to farming which was being an innovator rather than following tradition by discovering new ways of agric...

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... was responsible for the initiation of this movement. In 1908, he assembled the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (Weckowicz & Liebel-Weckowicz, p. 285).

Lidz (1966), sheds insight on Meyer’s major contributions at John Hopkins:

“to introduce psychobiology and dynamic psychiatry into the medical school curriculum – at that time, into the medical school; to establish a university training center for psychiatrists; to bring psychiatry into a close working relationship with the remainder of medicine; to build and develop a university psychiatric research and teaching hospital; to organize and run a model psychiatric hospital that was community oriented” (p. 328).

For the next 25 years, the medical school program, the residency training, the facilities, and the treatment program at the Phipps Clinic set the standards for other medical institutions (Lidz, p. 328).