The Treatment Program at Menninger

In 1946, a small sanitarium treating a few patients and training a few psychiatrists grew suddenly to become one of the largest schools of psychiatry and clinical psychology in the world, accepting classes of 100 psychiatric residents and ten clinical psychology interns. The motive of the federal government in supporting this effort was to train the mental health professionals needed to care for the military returning from World War II. The Menninger inpatient and outpatient programs described in this article were designed for the thorough treatment of a few patients, and so served as the inspiration, rather than the model, for the treatment of veterans.