This book provides the reader with the concepts underlying the Primary Mental Health Project (PMHP), which was developed and tested in the Rochester, New York area during the last 17 years. The book also describes emerging new roles for school mental health professionals and training methods for nonprofessional child aides. It explains how the local community, whose support is critical to the effectiveness of such a program, was enlisted and maintained. The first chapter discusses some problems confronting the field of mental health. Chapters 2 and 3 examine an overview of PMHP and it's early history. Chapter 4 discusses the role of aides in PMHP, while Chapter 5 looks at preparation for expansion of the program. The next two chapters discuss components of PMHP as they emerged in the extended program and provide a clearer image of the full program in action and its current structure. Chapter 8 focuses on the research operation and reviews the studies PMHP has done. Actual case studies and participants' reactions to PMHP are discussed in the following two chapters. Chapter 11 focuses on the question of how to go about setting up a PMHP, and chapter 12 presents a summary of PMHP's evolution. (SK)