Seminar With Mental Patients

Taking its cue from PBH's Mental Hospitals Committee, the Social Relations Department is considering plans for a seminar in abnormal psychology next year with mental patients as "laboratory studies." Each student would work twice a week rehabilitating one patient at the Waltham Hospital under the supervision of a trained social worker. Seminar discussions, assigned reading and research would then relate the patient's own problems to broader psychological theory. For the first time, students would have concrete "field experience" to supplement their text-book psychology. At the same time, they would meet with psychiatrists and observe the mental hospital in action.

Beyond its educational value, the student would aim at improving the health of his own patient, with the eventual goal of releasing him from the hospital. Despite the discovery of amazing new drugs, mental hospitals have been handicapped more and more by the critical lack of trained social workers.

While providing research material for its abnormal personality courses, the Social Relations Department would be experimenting boldly with the nation's most pressing health problem.