COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAMING

Abstract

Hollander has described the organization and services of one of the most highly developed child placement agencies in the country, with particular reference to the young children under its jurisdiction who are in long-term foster care. Beres, in turn, has traced the case history-up to the age of nineteen--of one such child, who was admitted to that agency as an infant and has been in foster care from the beginning. These two papers lend themselves, therefore, to joint discussion. Maria, Beres's patient, currently exhibits ego disturbances which he assumes, and I think we would all agree, are causally related to her early deprivation. Concomitantly, Hollander has observed that there is growing evidence of increased emotional disturbance among the child population in foster care. He has suggested that this would seem to imply the need to change some of the existing patterns of child placement services, and that the problem ought to be considered in relation to the community mental health service program as a whole. I shall forgo the temptation to comment on many of the intrapsychic obstacles to Maria's normal psychological development, so vividly presented by Beres. Instead, I shall comment on the vicissitudes of Maria's case history within the broader frame of reference suggested by Hollander. In brief, I shall focus on the fact that this case illus-