The Collaborative Coprofessional: Developing a New Mental Health Role

As the mental health professional moves into the community, he must develop new activities, attitudes, and skills so that he can participate usefully in the complicated and overlapping social systems he must deal with. He must develop a role that can be differentiated from, and yet integrated with, those of professionals in other caregiving fields; he can be called a collaborative coprofessional. As he takes on a broader responsibility for populations, he must also be prepared to deal with interrelated problems of shared domain, differing priorities of professionals in other fields, and the need to work within existing structures while actively promoting mental health principles. A bibliography is presented.