Eugenics movement

“Uncharitable opinions about specific national immigrant groups and their susceptibility to insanity, crime, and vice were, however, minority attitudes among U.S. psychiatrists. Most thought the real need was not new legislation but better enforcement of the old. Like Canadian psychiatrists, their attitudes toward immigration arose largely if not wholly from their progressive sense of duty to combat the entrenched business ‘interests’ allegedly profiting from unrestricted immigration. Political interference, in their view, only hamstrung the efficient operation of medical inspection and state hospitals, damaging the nation’s public health and financial resources and inflicting incalculable suffering on the insane newcomers deported or denied admission. Psychiatrists’ perceptions thus had more to do with progressive sentiments, occupational concerns, professional self-image and humanitarian considerations than generalized prejudices. They supported whatever legal reforms promised to improve their working conditions and promote reliance on psychiatrists as public health experts. That translated into better screening of foreigners with a predisposition to mental illness, and if psychiatrists exaggerated the immigrant threat, it was for these reasons more than anything else” (Dowbiggin II, 212) . . . At 1912 annual meeting the AMPA issued a reported , that claimed, inter alia, that “all questions of fact or opinion involved be governed and decided solely by the teachings of modern psychiatry” (215).