The mental health center's role in school consultation: toward a new model

The 1965 Boston Conference on the Education of Psychologists for Community Mental Health recommended a broad movement into the field of education and the development of the consultation function in an array of settings. The coordinator of that conference--at which the term "community psychology" was coined--presents a model for extending and redefining the traditional mental health--school consultation model. In this model consultation that is reaction to an existent problem by the clinical "expert" is integrated with a comprehensive model of collaboration that moves in the direction of systems change. The concept is presented through a case history of successful school--mental health center collaboration, a documentation of a full consultation service program to a large school system.