Psychiatric Social Work

This is, I believe, the first book to be devoted wholly to the subject of psychiatric social work. It is to be expected that it should come from America, where the experience of psychiatric social work extends over a period of thirty years and whose workers still are more articulate concerning the trends of their work and their essential roles than we are here in Britain. Much of the book is devoted to a historical survey of psychiatric social work, dealing with the developing role of the workers, not only in the specialized field of Child Guidance Clinics, State Mental Hospitals and Mental Hygiene Clinics, but also their influence on general social work. This is a theme of first importance to us in these days of wartime, when psychiatric social workers have so often left their old relatively well-defined spheres and have been called