"The psychologist in the therapeutic community, as in many other settings, does formal class teaching with psychology interns, nurses, psychiatric technicians and other student and staff personnel in such subject areas as psychopathology and group psychotherapy and other group techniques. He also provides community education through talks to lay groups." The psychologist may have an administrative role; as a team member he may have the role of assistant team leader, or of acting team leader in the psychiatrist's absence.

The evaluation and treatment of families at the Fort Logan Mental Health Center is described. There is considerable variation in the techniques used by the different treatment teams. The most widely used treatment technique is "multiple family group therapy" or "conjoint family group therapy." A number of trends are described: there is an increasing community orientation with many evaluations being done in homes, a wider extended family group being involved, and so on. There is an increasing tendency to view the locus of illness as being in the family rather than within the identified patient.

No abstract

Psychologists in Divisions 12 and 13 of the American Psychological Association are concerned about the apparent downgrading of their profession in community mental health centers by the Federal Government.In 1963, The Community Mental Health Centers Act (Pub. L. No. 88-164, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., Oct. 31, 1963) authorized Federal grants for the construction of local sites and stated in Section 54.212, Subsection C,2 "a qualified psychiatrist will be responsible for the clinical program, and the medical responsibility for every patient will be vested in a physician." Some psychologists have interpreted this regulation as discriminating against their experience, training, and competence by assuming that the director of a community mental health center must be selected on the basis of identity with a particular professionmedical.My Congressman, Clarence J. Brown (Seventh District, Ohio), was alerted to this problem and consulted with the office of the United States Surgeon General. Representative Brown reports:1. There has been a great deal of misunderstanding over this regulation.2. The director of a community mental health center does not have to be a physician or a psychiatrist; the director can be from a nonmedical profession.3. The responsibility for the administration of the minimal standards of Public Law 88-164 lies with officials of the various states (Sec. S4.20S).4. The proposed staffing legisation (H.R. 298S) for community mental health centers would not in any way change the present regulation for medical responsibility of the patient.This information indicates that there is no Federal discrimination against professions or competency in the selection of a director for a community mental health center, Instead, the qualifications of this official are a matter of individual state policy, as long as there is medical responsibility for each patient.

In recent years, more effective utilization of limited mental health manpower has required mental health professionals to shift more from direct service to consultation with workers whose job roles, while important to good mental health, are outside of the mental health field. There are often serious barriers to effective consultation in marked differences in job functions, training and education, and social class identification between consultant and consultee. The consultant can overcome these by familiarizing himself as directly as possible with the consultee's job, client population, and background. Successful examples of this type of consultation are described.