Based on the author's personal observations and opinions as a former public health psychiatric consultant, this book offers a theoretical orientation and practical guidelines for psychiatrists, analysts, clinical psychologists, psychiatric social workers, and others who hope to participate in community psychiatry as mental health consultants to human service professionals. In a pioneering inservice training program developed by the author in Berkeley, California, health department personnel discussed problems relation to their jobs, and the consultant used workers' own materials to educate them about psychological mechanisms and various aspects of normal and abnormal behavior. In this present work, potential consultants are alerted to characteristic attitudes found among members of three groups (public health nurses, nursery school personnel, public school teachers), and are shown how a leader of inservice training may help human service workers keep such attitudes from impeding their professional task. (The document includes nine references, case materials, excerpts from group sessions, and a model of professional and personal interactions in a nursery school environment.) (LY)