State mental health policy: Overview and goals of the Mississippi Youth Programs Around the Clock (MYPAC).

This column briefly outlines the Mississippi Youth Programs Around the Clock (MYPAC) Demonstration Project. MYPAC is a federally funded effort to examine community-based alternatives to residential placement for youths with severe emotional disturbance. The project is one of ten similarly structured grants awarded nationally and is among the first to reach implementation. Because such a large amount of funding has been dedicated to such a substantial cross-section of national public mental health services ($66,000,000 in Mississippi alone), it is important to make the field aware of developments in these projects as they occur.