ABSTRACT
Workers in the mental hospital field have often been reluctant to describe their work because they felt it was somehow inferior to that of their colleagues in child guidance. The role of the psychiatric social worker in the mental hospital developed in response to the individual demands of each particular institution. This lack of uniformity is evident in American psychiatric social work also. The amount of time psychiatric social workers actually spent with patients was not, however, apparent even within the profession until 1954 when a small study was undertaken in fifteen different hospitals. Present policy for mental health gives considerable emphasis to ‘community care. The term, which is itself not without ambiguity or undertones of wishful thinking, refers to the attempt to care for mentally ill people in the normal community and it clearly has implications of some importance for psychiatric social work.
