ABSTRACT
The management of a cooperative research project as conducted by a great university working with and within a large public mental hospital has been described. Three operated patients and one control were returned to the community. Social service experience with the religious and welfare organizations, as well as with the immediate families of the patients in this project, indicates that additional and different after-care is needed. Families become emotional and positive in their feelings for the patient at the time of signing permission for operation, but over a period of months their old negative feelings return unless they, themselves, have undergone a change of heart. In spite of alteration of the patient as a possible result of surgery, these negative feelings may again cause the patient to regress. Since few if any religious or social welfare organizations have a definite program for social service in mental cases or staffs equipped to deal with such patients the evaluation of psychiatric therapeutic efforts requires the assignment of special personnel to carry on the work of determining what influence the home situation is exerting on the patient’s behavior.
