For Mind & Soul

Psychiatrists and clergymen seem to be getting on better and better. When committees representing both groups (including Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish clergy) met 18 months ago to see whether they could cross-fertilize each other's professions, they set up the National Academy of Religion and Mental Health (TIME, April 9, 1956). The academy's tiny Manhattan office, run by the lev. George Christian Anderson (Episco-Dalian), was swamped with applicants for membership. By now it has signed up some 1,400 psychiatrists (more than 10% of all those practicing in the U.S.), 600 ministers, 200 organizations (seminaries, medical schools, convents, monasteries, mental-health agencies), has organized religion-psychiatry curriculums at three universities--Harvard, Loyola (Chicago) and Yeshiva (New York City).

This week the academy decided that it

had become global in scope, might as well

be so in name also: it dropped the word National from its title. Current evidence of its supranationality: it is engaged in

helping the Archbishop of Canterbury to build

mild psychiatric principles into Church of England seminary curriculums, and is cooperating with Moslem leaders in exploring mental-health needs in their theoogical schools.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.