Today's Priorities in Mental Health

Two themes seem to emerge repeatedly when reading through this volume. One is 'consensus' and the other is 'search'. There was a strong consensus during the Congress that children and families were the major and foremost concern of all present, regardless of their geographic origin or professional background. This concern was often expressed in terms of commitment to or as goal for the international mental health movement for the years to come. The second theme, 'search', represents an effort to translate this concern into activities: search for concrete, immediate goals, for ways and means of translating into actual programs and projects, for interested people to carry on the work and better ways to train them to do the work well, for ways to obtain support, and lastly, search for ways of coordinating efforts of people in different parts of the world. All these and other matters are taken up in the discussions in this volume. The complexity of problems encountered in a rapidly changing world and the diversity of resources available in different parts of the world, make the task of searching difficult and sometimes confusing. In spite of the earnest efforts made, the results may be inconclusive and some of those pro­ posed can be regarded only as hypotheses or ideas for experimentation.