COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRY, SOCIAL PSYCHIATRY, AND COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH WORK: SOME INTER-PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS IN PSYCHIATRY AND SOCIAL WORK
PORTIA BELL HUME M.D.1
1 Director, Center for Training in Community Psychiatry at Berkeley and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Univ. of Calif. Medical School at San Francisco
In community mental health work, the psychiatrist is primarily a clinician with public health responsibilities, that is, a new kind of practitioner with consultative, administrative and research functions. By the same token the psychiatric social worker is potentially, by training and experience, a clinician with public welfare responsibilities in community psychiatry and other mental health work, a practitioner with the available professional skills of a community organization specialist, a public welfare administrator, a groupworker, a supervisor, a consultant-educator, and a researcher. Acceptance of new responsibilities and roles is indicated by the highly motivated trainees from both professions, who are now seeking postgraduate, special training in community psychiatry. At the Center for Training in Community Psychiatry at Berkeley during the past two and a half years, for example, 176 psychiatrists and 124 psychiatric social workers have been enrolled together in 9 different courses. Social workers are likewise members of the faculty. Such inter-professional relationships in teaching and learning have, as a matter of fact, enhanced both the theory and practice of community psychiatry, and promoted the educational process in what must still be considered a pioneering area of psychiatry.
