ABSTRACT
In reaching to serve the mental health needs of new catchment neighborhoods, the 1963 federally funded Community Mental Health Center (CMHC) program stimulated culturally oriented research on the effectiveness of mental health services for Hispanics. The research, at first scattered and diffuse, has converged on a number of targets. This article examines four of the targets of research and how they can be brought into a unified perspective if they are viewed in temporal order as sequenced disadvantages Hispanics confront in using mental health services. The targets can be arrayed longitudinally: reasons for Hispanics’ underutilization of professional mental health services, difficulties in retaining Hispanics in such services, errors in evaluating their mental health, and the problems of adapting treatment modalities to their needs.
