A list of 53 mental health programs and services was presented to community samples of county commissioners and mental health board members, mental health program administrators, mental health clinicians, mental health clerical staff, clients, general public, staff of agencies related to mental health, and staff of community agencies not so related with a request to (a) indicate which programs and services were being offered by the mental health agencies of the catchment area, (b) indicate the relative importance of each offered service, and (c) indicate the relative importance for future program development of those not currently offered. Accuracy of program identification is noted and intergroup perceptions of mental health programs and services are compared.

Training centers are moving toward incorporating community mental health into their programs. This article describes the community component of a medical-school-based psychology internship program. The community program is based in three rural counties and affords the intern preplacement training as well as direct field training. The program involves one day a week for 12 months in one setting and a second day a week for three months in another. Field training focuses on crisis intervention and short-term treatment approaches, individual, group, and agency consultation, formal and informal community education experiences, and both program development and program evaluation.

Techniques for overcoming common stumbling blocks in consultation are outlined, and the advantages to consultants of viewing consultation as a mutual problem‐solving process are discussed. It is suggested that the consultant‐in‐training can achieve confidence in this approach only through experiencing the relationship from the other side by gaining first‐hand understanding of the situation of the consultee. Strategies towards this end are offered.

One hundred-seventy-three mental health centers responded to a survey inquiring about allocation of staff time for mental health services and about the availability of an array of services at present, 3 years previous, and 3 years hence. The data reflect an emphasis upon reactive services as opposed to those considered proactive, and on services directed to individuals as opposed to other groups. However, this emphasis seems to be changing. Future projections call for a de-emphasis on individual reactive programs and increased emphasis on programs directed toward families and small groups, and toward proactive programs directed to the communities-at-large. Data about specific programs and services further suggest de-emphasis of services that involve the mental health professional and the client in direct interaction, and continued growth in services that can be delivered by less formally trained mental health workers or volunteers.

PROBLEMThis study investigated the relationship between stress-related social events and psychological impairment. Other researchers@) have suggested that there are both qualitative and quantitative relationships between stress-related social events and psychiatric impairment. Beisser and Glasser ( l ) found that marital and occupational stress accounted for more than two-thirds of admissions to mental hospitals. These findings parallel those of Gurin, et al., (2), who surveyed a general population and found the major types of situations that create "worry" t o be economic or occupational. Those persons who sought help did so primarily because of marital and interpersonal problems.A recently developed instrument in psychosomatic research provides a precise means to investigate the temporal aspects and differential impact of various events on a person's life. Holmes and Rahe, et al. (3* 4 , 6 , 7 , describe the Schedule of Recent Experience (SRE) to record the chronology of life change events and the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) to quantify the amount of readjustment required by these events. They found certain events that clustered 12 to 24 months prior to the onset of physical disease that also were related to the severity of illness. With the SRE as our basic research instrument, it was hypothesized that there would be a direct relationship between the number of events experienced, when experienced, and weightings to the degree of psychological impairment. METHOD Subjects.Patients who entered one unit of a state mental hospital were screened by a psychiatric social worker to determine their suitability as Ss. Patients who were incapable of responding, who were deemed uncooperative, and/or who had been in a state hospital for more than 3 months in the preceding year were excluded. All others (N = 50) were interviewed individually by a trained interviewer. Of the 50 inpatients interviewed, 25 were male and 6 were nonwhite. The majority of patients were from low socioeconomic rural backgrounds. Over 66% had less than a high-school education. The ages of the respondents ranged from 20 to 70, mean 43.2.Procedures. The patients were seen within 14 days of their admission to the hospital inpatient wards. Each S was verbally presented the items from a modified form of the Schedule of Recent Experiences (SRE) by a trained interviewer and asked to indicate whether each of the 45 events on the scale had been experienced. If the respondent had experienced the event, it was ascertained within each of the following categories when it was experienced and how many times it happened:(1) 0 to 6 months; (2) 6 months to 1 year; (3) 1 to 2 years; (4) 2 to 3 years; and ( 5 ) more than 3 years ago, The information thus provided a picture of the kind, number, and period of occurrence of life changes for each patient.The analysis of the data utilized four basic measures from the SRE. These were (1) number of different events experienced, (2) number of times the event was experienced, (3) weighting of the event, and (4) time ...