Psychiatric Aftercare.

Psychiatric aftercare is a concept that covers a multiplicity of services for patients who, following a psychiatric hospitalization, need continued care. This small volume with an ambitious title presents a study done in Pennsylvania on such patients and their utilization of available aftercare services.

The author's eight-page chapter entitled Summary and Conclusions is a help to readers not happy with charts and graphs and "findings." The conclusions for this study note that 85% of patients do use aftercare services and that such use can, to some extent, lower rehospitalization. However, this is of limited value since over half of returnees would not have had their rehospitalization prevented by any aftercare service. A more telling conclusion is that the major beneficial service is what the author calls the triad of "medication, counseling, and psychotherapy." Services other than these such as vocational guidance and a marvelous term called "resocialization" were