Public-academic linkages in western States.

The role of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) in facilitating collaboration between higher education and state mental health agencies in the western states is presented in this paper. Unique service and training problems posed by sparsely populated states with limited numbers of professionally trained personnel and few clinical training programs make collaboration an important human resource issue in the West. WICHE's efforts over the past ten years to strengthen collaboration and the recent development of a regional coalition of educators, providers, and consumers to solve chronic treatment and research problems in the western states are described.