Issues critical to the survival of community mental health

The author delineates some of the critical issues that face community mental health, with the opportunity for either growth and further development or regression into a decentralized type of custodial care. These issues include clarifying boundaries and priorities, caring for chronically ill deinstitutionalized patients, providing differentiated care, collaborating with the community, relating to the rest of psychiatry and medicine, defining the community psychiatrist's role, maintaining psychiatric manpower, undertaking evaluation research, and achieving stable funding. Psychiatry's response to these issues will help determine the resolution of this crisis and the future viability and direction of community mental health.