Descriptive Inventory of Resources for the Ecology
of Mental Health and Work With the Disadvantaged

Descriptive Inventory of Resources for the Ecology
of Mental Health and Work With the Disadvantaged

Campus-Community Initiatives, University of Illinois, Poverty

In 1965, a faculty-student group discussing problems
in Mississippi and Champaign-Urbana at the University
YMCA noted the lack of a list of the University of
Illinois' resources and projects to benefit the disadvantaged.
Profs. Demitri Shimkin and Maynard Brichford
sought to remedy this lack by exploratory work in the
spring of 1966 and through initial faculty contacts by
research assistants Miss Catherine Salemi and Mr.
Dominic Candeloro in the summer and fall of 1966. These
activities auickly converged with strong interests of
the director and staff of the Illinois Department of
Mental Health in the ecological approach to mental
health and information on university resources. In
January 1967, a Department grant to the Center for
Human Ecology provided funds to complete an inventory
of university resources and projects as part of the
program development for research and training in the
ecology of mental health. As a permanent central
depository of university documentary material, the
University Archives had the experience to complete
a systematic listing of personnel, facilities and
activities available for consultative purposes.
A descriptive inventory compiled in five months has
many limitations. Some projects have been overlooked.
Others may have been imperfectly understood. We have
attempted to obtain sufficient information, standardize
the format, achieve reasonable uniformity and intelligibility
in the narrative descriptions, check for accuracy
with our informants, provide suitable indexes and print
the results. It is important that many people know
now what the University is doing in these areas.
In a technological society, universities sometimes
reflect their environment by over publicizing the
search for new knowledge and inventions. New programs,
new mechanical devices and new specialists are given
priority. This emphasis can become so heavy as to
support a suspicion that the search is more of a
flight from failure than the pursuit of excellence.
Broad areas in the social sciences and the humanities
have been islands of ignorance bypassed in our haste
to secure material comforts and protect a political
or economic position. The past decade has brought
increased recognition that our social structure has
exciting research and service frontiers in areas that
have been studied for centuries. The challenges of
education, mental health and the culturally disadvantaged
are as old as mankind.

NOTE: Left-part of page cut-off in first 30 pages.

Maynard Brichford

University of Illinois - privately published

July 1967

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