Psychiatry in community mental health centers: everyone can win.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the psychiatrist's role in community mental health programs, beginning with the evolution of psychiatric involvement in community mental health centers (CMHCs). There is a discussion of the current state of psychiatry in community mental health programs with descriptions of the types of roles psychiatrists occupy and their thoughts about those roles. The concluding sections focus on the ways psychiatrists can be utilized in community mental health programs so that both the psychiatrist and the agency benefit and are satisfied.