A Developmental View of Mental Health Manpower Trends

The need for an expanded pool of mental health manpower has resulted in a variety of unsuccessful national manpower experiments; the authors examine some of the factors in their failure. The current manpower-development trend appears to show more promise, with its potential for creating a generic mental health professional. The authors urge that concomitant changes be made in the training of members of all mental health disciplines so that a continuum of manpower, instead of the current fragmentation, would result.