Abstract
This report describes a year-long undergraduate course in community mental health, combining didactic and practicum elements. Following 10 weeks of content, 48 advanced psychology majors spent six months working as group leaders with chronic hospitalized schizophrenics or in after-school programs for primary-grade children experiencing adjustment difficulties. Reactions of installations and participants are reviewed and implications of this type of course model and orientation to training are considered. The goals of developing community mental health programs, research, graduate training in the helping professions, and undergraduate education are seen as mutually supportive and highly complementary, in this area.
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Support for the present work was received from NIMH (MH-1500-04) for the school program and from the Maurice Falk Medical Foundation for the hospital program. The authors wish to thank Messrs. Robert L. Carlisle, Paul Goldring, Gershen Kaufman, and Miss Joan Huser for their supervisory and administrative contributions to the project.
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Cowen, E.L., Chinsky, J.M. & Rappaport, J. An undergraduate practicum in community mental health. Community Ment Health J 6, 91–100 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01434654
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01434654