Harvard School of Public Health - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAM O N July 1, 1964 our Community Mental Health Program will transfer en bloc from Harvard School of Public Health to Harvard Medical School. A new insti¬ tution will be established under my direction in the Department of Psychiatry to be called the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry. The major reason for this move is my wish to bring our activities into closer relation¬ ship with the main stream of psychiatric education and research. In the new setting we will participate in the education of psychiatric residents and medical students, and we will also offer a special program to professors of psychiatry from other medical schools, who will attend on a visiting basis an intermittent seminar two or three times a year for a three-year period. These plans are associated with recent developments in Amer¬ ican psychiatry. The rapidly growing interest in establishing local community programs for the prevention and control of mental disorders, which was stimulated by the Report of the Joint Commission of Mental Illness and Mental Health and by the Message to Congress of the late President Kennedy on February 5, 1963, has created an urgent demand for a reorientation of psychiatric education towards community and preventive theories and practices. In the past, these issues were mostly viewed with disinterest in medical schools; and schools of public health offered a welcome base for the few re¬ search and development programs in community mental health in this country. During Left to right —Barbara Lowe, Claire Belyea, Gerald Caplan, Charlotte Owens, Rhona Rapaport. 16

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M y major activity and interest for the future are to see the Department of Public Health Practice fulfill its responsibilities realistically and broadly to its students and to world society by its search for and dissemination of knowledge. It is people—staff and students—that really make a department what it is; they are by far the most important determinants of its interests. And among my interests for future major activities of the Department of Public Health Practice are the following: • A better understanding of sociocultural factors in health and disease and in the administrative process. • More insight into methods for influencing the quantity and quality of personal health services available to people throughout the world. • Greater comprehension of the process of economic development and the particular role played by investments in health programs. • Increased understanding of the influence of organizational and administrative struc¬ ture on health programs through the comparative study of different organizations with similar objectives. • And last, but far from least, better curriculum and teaching programs for our stu¬ dents so that we can assist them most effectively in becoming leaders in public health and related professions. Robert Henry Hamlin Head of Department Left to right —Sydney Croog, Beryl Magee, Roy Penchansky, Sol Levine, Norman Scotch, Peggy Salmon, Robert Hamlin, Marjorie Young, Katherine Fitzpatrick. 15

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Gerald Caplan Head of the Program Community Mental Health the coming years there is likely to be a radical change, and our move to Harvard Medical School is an early sign of this. The professors of psychiatry who will attend our Visiting Seminar will all be developing programs of research and education in community psychiatry in their own medical schools. I am pleased that our move will be effected with a minimum of upset in the educa¬ tional program in community mental health at the School of Public Health. The new developments increase rather than reduce the need of public health workers to learn about problems of the prevention and control of mental disorders. Dean Snyder has announced that Harvard School of Public Health will encourage cross registration of its students in courses in the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry. The Laboratory course schedule will be arranged so as to facilitate H. S. P. H. students taking elective courses with us in topics such as the theory and practice of preventive psychiatry, strategies of community mental health research, group and community processes, and administrative problems in community psychiatry. In addition, I and members of my staff will continue to participate on a sessional basis in the teaching of regular courses in such Harvard School of Public Health Departments as Epidemiology, Maternal and Child Health, Public Health Practice, and Industrial Hygiene. We hope these and other measures will lead to a full collaborative partnership between us to the mutual benefit of our students and of our research and teaching programs. 17 Gerald Caplan Head of the Program