Services-in-Kind, A Form of Compensation for Mental Health Services

A community mental health center in Laurel, Maryland, operates a program through which clients can compensate the center by contributing their own services to the center or the community. Clients have provided secretarial, babysitting, and tutoring services, and have also been trained to serve as co-therapists in children's and couples' groups. The authors believe such a program is important in helping clients, especially the urban poor, create an equitable relationship with others; it also helps them enact the role of healer, which the authors feel is essential for successful therapy.