Founding of GAP

The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, or "GAP," was founded in May 1946 on the eve of the 102nd annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association by a small group of psychiatrists. Most of these individuals had been actively engaged in wartime service and observed the serious problems that resulted from the general failure to apply available psychiatric knowledge and skills in the screening of military recruits and in the prevention and treatment of mental breakdowns among military personnel. On the civilian front, there was a lack of efforts to sustain and strengthen community defenses against mental illness, and there was an absence of leadership and representation of psychiatry in government, industry, labor, commerce, and medicine. Dr. William C. Menninger was Brigadier General and chief of neuropsychiatry in the U.S. Army medical corps at the time; he was elected chairman of GAP and Dr. Henry W. Brosin was elected secretary.