Comprehensive Mental Health: The Challenge of Evaluation.

Abstract

This volume is reported to be the proceedings of a 1966 symposium on the problems of evaluation in comprehensive mental health programs, 250 of which had by that time been established under Public Law 88164. The conference was sponsored by the University of Wisconsin, Department of Psychiatry, the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute, and the Wisconsin State Department of Public Welfare, Division of Mental Hygiene. The editors represent these sponsoring agencies. A distinguished interdisciplinary group of mental health professionals was brought together from varied settings across the United States, and each is represented by a chapter. The papers as presented vary greatly in quantity and quality, ranging from Dr. Marc Fried's "Evaluation and the Relativity of Reality," which was detailed and helpful in its emphasis on the effect of contexts on behavior, and the need to consider transitory validation in developing evaluation procedures; to that of Dr. Werner Mendel's "On the