ABSTRACT
The psychologist as a mental health consultant is a relatively new role requiring a breadth of knowledge and experience culled from a number of fields and applied in a wide variety of areas. In the remarks which follow, the historical background of mental health consultation, as a specific technique, will be sketched and differentiated from other types of consultation. The definition of mental health consultation suggests that there is a relationship to education, psychotherapy, supervision and administration in the process of consultation. Education generally emphasizes a long-term systematic approach; the curriculum is usually planned; the problem area is usually well-defined and delimited and the teacher may "feed" information to the student. In mental health consultation, there is no highly structured, pre-planned approach. There is an essential and basic difference between consultation and supervision. Corrective emotional experiences take place in both mental health case consultation and in psychotherapy, but once again in a much less intensive fashion in the former.
