Strategies of Mental Hospital Change.

Today, as a concerted effort is being marshaled by mental health professionals to reduce the morbidity of mental disease in the total population, the approximately 800,000 patients in hundreds of public mental hospitals throughout the United States reminds us of the failures of the past, as well as pressing priority needs for the present. The state mental hospital has become, through the isolated retention of an older pessimistic view of mental disease, the repository of society's casualties. It is therefore encouraging to read this book which attempts to delineate the factors necessary to change these large institutions and their personnel in the direction of more effective therapeutic care.

This book describes a project which originated in the Massachusetts' Department of Mental Health. The project attempted to find out what could be accomplished by additional persons (two psychiatrists, one psychologist, and one sociologist) in a state hospital