The changing role of the mental health organization

Citizens groups which are organized throughout the country for promoting mental health care have been enormously effective since WWII in stimulating the growth of community treatment facilities and in increasing the sources of monetary support. The treatment services now available, however, have met a roadblock of inadequate manpower. Since success will depend upon the quantity and quality of mental health manpower, this problem must be the next major one to solve. Professional channels are generally alert to this problem, and, for the most part, are diligent in their efforts to recruit and train new personnel. The people to be trained, however, are now a part of the general population and largely out of reach of the professionals. Citizens groups could prove to be most effective in the future if they now began to direct their attention toward: (a) recruiting young people at the high school and college level to go into the mental health professions, and (b) exerting an organized, systematic taxpayer's kind of pressure on state legislatures and training centers to improve, expand, or inaugurate training facilities. Some ideas on specific ways of doing this are proposed.