Search

The article shares the author's thoughts on the review of the papers presented to the Association of Mental Deficiency in the U.S. in the past ten years. He relates that it has seemed best to present abstracts of the papers without adding special comments. He expresses his gratitude to the librarian, Hazel Catlin, for helping him prepare the abstracts.

This article provides an overview of the topics discussed in the November 1955 issue of the "Journal of Social Issues." The first paper describes more fully the general area of research, the conceptual framework and the design of a project which aims to study the impact of mental illness upon the family. The second paper discusses the courses of consultation and action which are taken to get the patient to treatment. The succeeding article looks at the responses of others who learn of the patient's illness and the anxieties of the family regarding the reactions others. The final paper in the issue summarizes preliminary findings in areas of the research not covered by the previous papers and examines some of the practical implications of the research for mental health programs.

An earlier paper presented findings which indicated that mentally ill persons described as exhibiting identical behavior were increasingly rejected when they were described as utilizing no help, utilizing a clergyman, a physician, a psychiatrist, or a mental hospital. Controls for age, religion, education, and social class position failed to diminish the relationship between help-source and rejection, but controls for experience with an emotionally disturbed help-seeker and for adherence to the norm of self-reliance tended to specify it. The previous paper was concerned with the stability of the relationship between help-source and rejection within each of the control groups, and not, for the most part, with differences among groups. In this paper, the main focus is on a comparison of the effects of educational attainment on the relation between help-source and rejection. A further focus is on the influence of (a) experience with mentally ill help-seekers, and (b) attitude toward the norm of self-reliance, two variables that serve to interpret the relationship between education and rejection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the periodical literature on techniques of psychotherapy. In spite of the considerable number of articles and books which are now being published on the subject of psychotherapy, it is often difficult to determine exactly what therapists do, or think they do, to help their clients overcome psychological and psychosomatic difficulties. In the article, the authors have surveyed only recent periodical literature on psychotherapy, since the authors do not consider broad conception of psychotherapy novel to the article.

Traditionally, mental health workers (psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers) provide diagnostic evaluations and individual or group psychotherapeutic or casework treatment. With the advent of the community mental health movement, a new role model, that of "mental health consultant," has emerged. This paper outlines the functions of the "mental health consultant" in the Job Corps program as a way of highlighting the functions of the mental health Professional working in this new way. Educational, training, and work programs may be enriched by mental health consultation, and the new directions for interaction between education and mental health are described in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since attempts by adherents to various psychotherapeutic orientations have failed to demonstrate the efficacy of any one of them, this paper tries to explicate the single variable--humanness--that seems to underlie all therapeutic approaches, and may account for the positive results obtained by all approaches. Many investigators have emphasized the importance of a positive relationship as a factor in counseling; but an influential force, behavior modification therapy, has attempted to once again place the role of technique in the spotlight. Their results have not been striking. A second aim, therefore, of this paper is to offer a critique of this position in the light of humanistic and research considerations. The implications of a technique-oriented therapeutic approach are also discussed. A plea is entered for emphasis being placed on, and an investigation of, the role of humanness as the most important variable in the counseling process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do marriages which are basically neurotic survive? Why do married couples who live together in a basically neurotic relationship for a number of years suddenly seek psychiatric assistance? This paper raises these questions and finds that such marriages begin with mutually complementary-need systems which quickly become interlaced. Since both partners obtain gratification for their neurotic needs, the marriage tends to endure. Psychiatric assistance is sought when some specific event occurs which clearly disrupts the neurotic equilibrium and alters the neurotic gratification each partner receives from the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates and describes methods for making psychiatric distinctions. It is by means of psychiatric distinctions that individuals are labeled mentally ill or mentally well. Within the mentally ill category, patients are differentially placed according to the severity and type of their mental illness. The placement of individuals into psychiatric categories is an essential prerequisite not only to the clinical treatment of patients but also to any research where the objective is to determine empirical regularities associated with mental illness. Until the patient is categorized, the practitioner has no logical guide for how to perform treatment or even whether he should treat the patient—i.e, the patient may not be a patient. Similarly, unless the psychiatric researcher has categorized his subjects according to some notion of mental illness he has no way of making comparisons or of assessing change, the two essential processes in research. Thus, the logical first step for arty discovery of new knowledge in the field of mental illness is to appraise the reliability and validity of methods for making psychiatric distinctions. No research findings can be more reliable or valid than the psychiatric distinctions used in carrying oat the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines aspects of school nursing and its work setting as bases for the interactive nature of nursing practice in schools. Mental health consultation is presented as a means of reducing role stress and increasing effectiveness. A case example of the consultative process is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion of the orientation of mental health professionals toward human services in the U.S. The author in this paper has traced the development of ideology among mental health professionals and has concluded that a more inclusive human service belief system is developing among mental health and other community caregivers. Growing out of the community mental health ideology which gained prominence during the nineteen sixties, the human service orientation is seen as potentially playing a major role in rationalizing and justifying an even more expanded pattern for organizing comprehensive integrated programs of service for the nineteen-seventies.

Hospitalized mental patients are increasingly being discharged into the community. Yet, despite the construction of hundreds of community mental health centers, readmission rates continue to rise. This paper analyzes the reasons for this problem and provides suggestions for its solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article constructs a Terminators-Remainers scale composed of those items of the Social History Questionnaire that best differentiated between Terminators and Remainers. A formidable problem encountered in clinical practice concerns the large number of clients who start psychotherapy but for various reasons terminate treatment prematurely. The initial sample of this study consisted of 95 clients accepted for psychotherapy during a 11-month period at a small mental health clinic. The measure used was the Social History Questionnaire, a 393-item, forced-choice, pencil-and-paper intake interview.

The article presents abstracts of various research papers published in the June 1961 issue of "Journal of Health and Human Behavior." One of the abstract discusses the relationship between and intrapsychic processes. Another abstract presents a study which attempts to ascertain, and account for, the presence of significant differences in knowledge of attitudes toward mental disease between a sample of high school boys and one from a boys' reformatory. The purpose of one of the papers on hospital-patient relationships is to clarify the precise nature of the relationship between mental hospitals and patients and to compare and contrast it with the relationship between medical hospitals and patients. Another paper on mental hospitals presents information about four types of "pathway" organizations which seek to assist in the transitional period between the discharge of a mental patient from a hospital and his re-entry into community life. The four general types considered are day hospitals, halfway houses, sheltered workshops, and ex-patient organizations.

This paper presents a feminist interpretation of mental illness based on national statistics, mental health surveys, psychological and sociological experiments, psychological analytic theories and practices, and on an original study. An analysis of NIMH statistics revealed that 125, 351 more women than men have been psychiatrically hospitalized from 1964-1968. From 1 950-1968, 223,268 more women than men were hospitalized in state mental asylums. Female patients generally outnumber males in private treatment, and both significantly prefer a male rather than a female therapist. These facts are discussed as one of the effects of sex-role stereotyping and the oppression of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on psychological research in the community mental health service in the United States. The need is obvious for the development of public health practices which will control the causes of mental ill health as effectively as is now done with many other diseases. It is the purpose of this paper to discuss the opportunities and the methodological problems for the psychologist doing research in the field of community mental hygiene. Research on community mental hygiene, it seems to the author, can best be attacked by studying those factors in total community life which prevent or promote the development of healthy patterns of adjustment by individuals or groups. Stating this a little differently, research in community mental hygiene might best be concerned with the nature and the origin of conflicts, frustrations, or confusions for persons or groups which are part of the community way of life.

This research paper focuses on an attempt to validate a measure of mental health. The subject of the investigation is a scale included in a study of mental health in an urban area of southwest Michigan. The twenty-two questions used in the scale had been designed to assess the mental health of respondents in the New York Midtown study. Responses to these questions had correlated with the mental health ratings given by the Midtown study psychiatrists. One of the aims of the present study was to appraise the concurrent validity of a mental health scale derived from the questions used in the Midtown study. The scale was based upon a simple addition of the number of questions that were answered positively by the respondent. A summary score of "0" represented best mental health while higher scores were indicative of progressively poorer mental health. This scale will be referred to as the 22 Item Mental Health (MH) Scale. Two main techniques were used to evaluate validity. The first was the known groups procedure, in which the questions were administered to samples drawn from populations whose mental health was known or might be estimated. The second was the independent criteria method, in which other measures of mental health were compared with the results obtained from the 22 Item MH Scale.

The paper is concerned with a method of organizing and analyzing information relating to human stocks and flows. The kind of statistical reporting system envisaged is of a traditional kind, but extended so as to record year-to-year changes of state. Life is divided into a number of sequences, each with its own set of characteristic classifications, to avoid an excessive proliferation of categories and so enable many analyses to be made with the kind of statistics already available in a number of countries. The need, for some analytical purposes, to combine classifications from different sequences is fully recognized; and this need indicates a direction in which statistical reporting systems should move in the future. The main analytical tool is a set of linear difference equations which, under suitable conditions, can be interpreted either in terms of an input-output system, as in economics, or in terms of an absorbing Markov chain, as in probability theory. A simple regression model is used to link characteristic classifications. About half the paper is taken up with numerical examples, mainly connected with the British educational system as it was in the mid-1960's. An application is also given to movements into, through and out of a psychiatric service system in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a report of a study by Horizon Noun, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, aimed at reactivating dropouts from a psychiatric rehabilitation program. The experiment's goals were twofold: (1) to reach the dropouts by using two forms of contact--the telephone conversation and the home visit---and (2) to determine whether a differentiation could be made between the dropouts and a control group of active clients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a study of thirty nonrelative adopted children referred to a psychiatric facility. Descriptive data are presented on the adoption, the child's symptomatology, and the frequency of requests for out-of-home placement. Potential difficulties in adoptive placements are suggested for further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many practicing social workers need more accessible points of referral for clients with special problems, especially when those problems are emotional and mental. This article focuses on a research, which reports and analyzes a set of paradoxical findings from a survey of the opinions of a cross section of a community's social agencies with respect to the proportion of mentally and emotionally disturbed clients handled and the psychiatric facilities needed for their referral and consultation about them. This research paper also classifies agencies according to their function and clients according to the agencies' descriptions of the problems they present; reports the perceived needs in terms of the type of agency and its clientele; and discusses the agencies' perceptions and their significance for the introduction of new services. Workers in most supportive agencies would like psychiatric guidance for two reasons: to help in their own treatment and understanding of the client and for help in selecting clients for psychiatric therapy. Many workers took the opportunity of mentioning the need for better co-ordination of concrete services for their clients.

Based on a review of problems in treatment evaluation in mental health centers, this paper offers a theoretical rationale and a methodology for dealing with them using automated computer techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the Egba-Egbado Yoruba peoples of Nigeria there are several village psychiatric treatment programs. Nigerian psychiatrists believe that such village programs have greater therapeutic and economic efficacy than treatment modalities and structures commonly found in Western society. This paper discusses the identification and assessment of social and cultural elements which enhance or detract from the therapeutic potential of the village treatment programs. Psychological, social and cultural data are utilized to suggest comparisons between Yoruba therapeutic communities and Western psychiatric communities. The potential of these programs and further refinement of the concept "therapeutic community" are also considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports the issue of position paper, "The Community and the Community Mental Health Center." The position paper was recently issued by the American Psychological Association (APA). The report, written by APA president Nicholas Hobbs and M. Brewster Smith, Director of the Institute of Human Development, University of California at Berkeley, analyzes the program of Community Mental Health Centers now being planned or started. This is the first position paper APA has addressed to the general public and community planners.

The article discusses the issues concerning the training and deployment of social work manpower in the U.S. Manpower problems involved in providing health and medical care services to the total population of the country has, for the first, been recognized by health professionals, the consumers of services and policy-makers. Another concern in the country's health system is the significant changes in the organization and structure of the health and mental health services, which will have great impact on the ultimate delivery of service.

The article discusses a research paper about the institutionalization of a retarded infant, presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Association on Mental Deficiency at the Hotel Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in May 1952. A chart is presented to illustrate the number of mentally defective patients in public institutions in the United States for the years of 1936-1948. Inter-related factors that contribute to the increase in the number of children under the age of five who have been institutionalized are discussed.

Mental-health care is a major public-sector problem in the State of New York. We were asked by the Ways and Means Committee of the New York State Assembly to recommend a new fiscal structure with shared funding; between the state and the counties to better achieve the objective of the state's mental-health-care program. We developed a simulation model for the problem and used it to design new funding plans; the results of our analysis have been written into legislation introduced into the New York State Assembly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues related to psychotherapy. Researcher J. Wolpe argues that psychoanalysis is a theoretically unsound treatment and its practical results are actually poor. He thinks that the main common factor is reciprocal inhibition of neurotic anxiety responses, and that therapists may accomplish this while "aiming at something quite different." In cases of anxieties elicited by inanimate objects, Wolpe uses systematic training in conditioned relaxation and states that "powerful autonomic effects" can be observed in a well-trained patient who has learned to relax local musculature rapidly.

A major objective in the development of mental health services has been to provide treatment as early as possible in the course of the illness. In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary both that adequate treatment services be available and that they be perceived as necessary by the patients and/or his family. This article focuses on the steps by which hospitalization itself is arrived at. These are clearly two aspects of the same phenomenon which cannot be wholly separated: actions taken depend on what the actors see as the nature of the problem facing them, and in turn perceptions as to the nature of the problem are modified by the actions and interpretations of others involved in the process of dealing with the patient.

The article presents a paper that explores the applicability of psycho-analytical psychotherapy in a National Health Service clinic for out-patients who suffer from psychoneuroses in Great Britain. The technique of psychotherapy was based on psychoanalysis in so far as the patients were encouraged to freely associate and priority was given to the elucidation and interpretation of unconscious resistances. The implications of the results and those obtained with individual therapy in cases of long-standing illness cannot be denied or ignored. The results suggests that patients receive benefit from psycho-analytical psychotherapy and justify the initiation of pilot studies which might examine the efficacy of analytical psychotherapy in a manner acceptable to the psychiatrists and physicians.

The article presents a paper that reviews the psychological theories of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). It considered the theoretical approaches towards explaining the effects of electroconvulsive shock (ECS) on animals. As the work of ECS with animals has been more empirical than corresponding work with human beings, it has led to more consistent findings and a sounder basis of theorizing. Hence, theories drawn from animal research may be able to give useful leads for explaining the effects of ECT on human beings. The main conclusion arising out of this reviews is that the researchers have come very little way towards explaining the effects of ECT. It is further suggested that help in the solution of the problem may be obtained from utilizing the results of experimentation on animals.

The article presents a comment of the study conducted by psychiatrists E. Grünthal and G. E. Störing's case of organic amnesic syndrome. It questions the memory retention defects due to the symptoms reported by Grünthall and Störing's original paper on its theoretical and practical importance of the case. Carbon monoxide intoxication of the patient was the reason for both psychiatrists to conclude on the patient's emotional, temperamental and memory defects. However, professor H. Scheller re-investigated the case and doubted that organic amnesic syndrome was attributed to carbon monoxide poisoning since there was no similar case reported and no neurological signs in intoxication with severe psychiatric disturbance.

Nowadays a significant amount of writing related to the treatment of emotionally troubled persons is devoted to examining the broad base of human experience. On this count the existentialist writers and professional people have enlarged the understanding of the range and scope of human potentialities and capacities. Thus, many members of the helping profession have not been satisfied merely to refine their therapeutic techniques, or to accumulate psychodynamic information, they are now addressing themselves to an understanding of the human condition. During recent employment in a psychiatric outpatient clinic, the worker worked with a 31 year old single man on a weekly interview basis over an eight-month period. The patient had two previous experiences with therapy in clinic settings that, according to him, had not been helpful. Specific innovations in therapy seemed called for because of the nature, chronicity, and extent of the patient's problems, the type of defenses he employed, his capacities and strivings, and the failure of more traditional psychotherapeutic methods.

A different type of psychiatric emergency program is described and preliminary data concerning its operation are presented. The program provides emergency service ranging from outpatient visits to twenty-four hour care. Further reports are anticipated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a study which investigated the relative incidence of positive and negative discharge attitudes among psychiatric patients, and examined the relationship between these attitudes and patients' length of continuous hospitalization, discharge rates, and test performance. A sample of 358 patients, representing approximately two-thirds of the male veterans institutionalized at a Veterans Administration hospital was obtained by a procedure in which subsamples of between 25 and 30 patients were randomly selected from each of the hospital's 14 nongeriatric wards.

The article presents several activities that deal with exceptional children in the U.S. In the mentally handicapped art class, the teacher demonstrated a step by step process of creating a picture. Though simple, the finished drawings brought satisfaction to the children. To deal the problem of distributing the toys fairly so that school children would be able to enjoy them, a toy library was organized at the Oregon State School. Ann Harvey, director of pre-school, kindergarten, and primary education at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota has developed three phonograph records of coordination rhythm for nursery school children.

The article discusses a research paper about developing an industrial therapy program, presented at the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Association on Mental Deficiency at Hotel Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 1952. It is the role of an industrial therapist to assign the patients to various jobs for them to receive the maximum training. There should be a careful job-analysis of all the work assignments within the institution.

The article presents the minutes of the second meeting of the Council of the American Association on Mental Deficiency held in Montreal, Quebec on October 4, 1946. The meeting was presided by the association's president, Mabel A. Matthews. The members discussed on whether a fourth vice-president should be added in the association's officer list. The auditing committee also presented the financial condition of the association. The paper "The Marked Variations in Deportation and Settlement Laws in Different States" was discussed.

Viewing comprehensive health centers and community mental health programs as links in a delivery system that may provide the framework for a possible national health system, five goals in planning and providing liaison-care are described. A case illustrating this interaction is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study, which outlines an example of mental patients' fears of resuming independent living in the community as a result of the debilitating effects of institutionalism. Attempts to combat these negative elements were undertaken in this study by simulating independent living within the confines of a psychiatric service. However, the strong patient resistance encountered indicated that this is a difficult problem area, which deserves much continued attention and study. On the basis of this experience, it is suggested that future investigators not be deterred nor surprised by the lack of initial patient response.

One hundred and ten clients of a psychiatric clinic were interviewed to discover why they had decided to undertake psychotherapy. To study this depth decision an accounting-scheme technique was used consisting of five stages, the first of which, recognition of an emotional problem, was the focus of the study. Four typical ways of discovering that one had a problem were found: being told by others, experiencing painful physical symptoms, being unhappily married, and simply feeling diffused unhappiness. These types were found to differ with regard to their definition of the problem, their use of mass media, and their response to treatment. Those who recognized their problem through introspection and could change their self-image from that of a normal to a disturbed person had the best chance of being accepted by the clinic and of continuing their treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights the working group meeting regarding the role of the social worker in psychiatric services in Nice, France. Organization of the meeting by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe; Scope and purpose of the meeting; Papers prepared for the meeting.

The article presents a study which aims to distinguish criminals from mentally ill among individuals exhibiting lawbreaking deviant behavior in the U.S. Law students, general college students, and mental health professionals investigate lawbreaking acts and attempt to identify whether the act was committed maliciously or as a result from mentally illness. The results indicate that mental health professionals applied the mentally ill label more broadly than college students. It was also found out that mental health professionals restricted the criminal label a narrow range of deviancies. It is suggested that the results are useful in reflecting the tendency of the studied professionals to apply broadly level.

The article presents a study which aims to investigate the agreement of professional mental health workers and laymen regarding the effective and socially appropriate solutions in dealing with hypothetical real-life problems in the U.S. Results indicate that there is a substantial agreement among professionals regarding the effective solution to real-life problems. The study concluded that effective solutions to real-life problems was common to normal persons regardless of educational degree of expertise in mental health aspects.