550 Professional Organizations
problems of human–machine interaction. Disciplines or pro-
fessions represented in the society include psychologists, en-
gineers, physicians, and physiologists. The name of the group
was changed to the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
in 1992. Membership at the end of the twentieth century was
approximately 5,200.
The Cognitive Science Society was established in 1979 to
promote interdisciplinary work in cognition. Its members in-
clude psychologists, linguists, computer scientists, educators,
and philosophers. The Society of Behavioral Medicine was
founded in 1978 for professionals and scientists from psy-
chology, medicine, public health, and nursing. The focus of
the society is on the relationships among behavior, health,
and illness.
In the 1920s, interest grew in developing a science of child
development. Both the Commonwealth Fund and the Laura
Spelman Rockefeller Foundation gave large grants to start or
sustain child development institutes (Lomax, 1977). In 1925,
the National Academy of Sciences formed a Committee in
Child Development. In 1927, the committee published the
first compendium of research in child development, Child
Development Abstracts and Bibliography. In 1933, the
Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) was or-
ganized and the Committee on Child Development was
disbanded. After a period of growth in the 1930s, the SRCD
experienced a decrease in members and activities in the
1940s, followed by an expansion in numbers and activities
that continued to the end of the century.
In 2000, membership in the society exceeded 5,000 and
comprised scientists and professionals from many disci-
plines, including psychology. The society’s publishing pro-
gram at the beginning of the twenty-first century included
three journals: Child Development, Child Development Ab-
stracts and Bibliography,andMonographs of the Society for
Research in Child Development.Other society publications
wereThe Social Policy Report,a newsletter, and a member-
ship directory.
The society became active in the formulation of social
policy applications based upon child development research.
To this end, the society established a Government Fellows
Program in Child Development in 1978. The fellows worked
to keep the relevant federal agencies informed of child re-
search and to facilitate the development of social policy
based upon scientific research (Hagen, 2000).
The World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) was or-
ganized in 1948. Its predecessor was the International Com-
mittee for Mental Hygiene, an organization founded in 1919
by Clifford Beers (Dain, 1980). Beers had been an asylum
patient as a young man and upon his discharge wrote an
exposé of the horrors and ineptitude of the asylum system.
A Mind That Found Itself (1908) was an international
best-seller. Beers took advantage of his public visibility and
founded the National Committee for Mental Hygiene
(NCMH) in 1909. The NCMH worked to reform psychiatric
institutions and treatment.
Citizen groups and medical professionals in other coun-
tries organized equivalent societies, and Beers was encour-
aged to start a new international group. He did so in 1919,
and the International Committee for Mental Hygiene (ICMH)
was formed with broad support from a wide array of mental
health professionals and citizen groups. The ICMH held the
First International Congress on Mental Hygiene in 1930 in
Washington, D.C. The congress had over 3,000 registered at-
tendees, among them all the leading figures in psychiatry,
psychology, and social work as well as many prominent po-
litical and medical figures. By the advent of the Second Inter-
national Congress on Mental Hygiene held in France in 1937,
enthusiasm and support had waned. The congress was much
smaller and bedeviled by complaints about the influence of
Nazi sympathizers (Dain, 1980). Beers made plans to hold
another congress, but World War II prevented its occurrence.
Beers died before the end of the war, and the international
movement had no effective leader.
After the war, UNESCO and the World Health Organiza-
tion (WHO) prompted mental health professionals from
many countries to convene the Third International Congress
on Mental Hygiene in London. The two UN agencies sought
to stimulate a new international mental health organization
that was less dominated by psychiatry and more inclusive of
other human and social sciences (Rees, 1963). A commission
was formed and supported by UNESCO and WHO to draw
up plans for the new organization. In 1948, the World Feder-
ation for Mental Health was founded at the Third Interna-
tional Congress for Mental Hygiene (Brody, 2000).
The federation grew after its inception to include a wide
array of individual mental health providers and researchers,
users of mental health services, and nongovernment organiza-
tions. Membership in the WFMH in the year 2000 stood at 170
national or international organizational members, 170 regional
affiliate members, and more than 2,300 individual members.
The major work of the federation is to promote mental health
worldwide through a wide array of educational and advocacy
efforts. To that end, it holds regional conferences, a biennial
congress, and publishes a newsletter. The federation is an ap-
proved mental health consultant to every major UN agency.CONCLUSIONScientific and professional psychological societies and asso-
ciations proliferated over the course of the twentieth century.
Organizations such as those discussed in this chapter played