Guidance for the troubled

              A CHILD stands up in class and screams out his fear and frustration. He has just witnessed a series of vio­lent fights between his parents.
A boy with a high IQ faces his teacher sullenly. He refuses to do simple arithmetic problems. He is afraid of failing his father, a brilliant engineer.
Today in St. Tammany parish, children like these usually get a lot more "straightening out"1 than a trip to the prin­cipal's office can give them. They often receive help from a source that did not exist a year ago* This aid is not confined to children, either. It can touch the lives of their mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts and uncles.
There are men, women and children in every com­munity who are dragging an extra, but often invisible, burden through life. Sometimes it's like a big sack of potatoes—-just heavy and in the way. Sometimes it's more like a time bomb that explodes and shatters their lives without warning.
Such people are those with emotional difficulties which are not serious enough to place them in mental institu­tions but grave enough to be nagging and growing prob­lems in their daily lives—the child whose home situation makes him a discipline problem in school; the unhappily married man who is drinking too much and showing up for work too seldom.
WHAT CAN a community do to help these people—to keep them  out   of  the  mental  hospitals,   prisons,   juvenile
courts,   divorce  courts  and  alcoholic  wards  for  which
many of them are headed? This is a question that a women's organization In Cov*
Ington, La., brought up two years ago. As a result, there is a St. Tammany parish guidance center—a mental health first-aid station and clinic, in which people can receive treatment and still carry on their normal daily lives. They pay only what they are able.
The St. Tammany clinic is similar to a dozen others that are now operating in the state. Since 1948, such" guid­ance clinics have been established in Shreveport, Alex­andria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Hammond, Bogalusa, Monroe, Lake Charles, Ruston, Natchitoches, Donaldson-ville and Houma.
THE STORY of the birth of the Covington center is typi­cal.
The idea started with the Covington Chapter of the Delphians,  a women's national  study group.
Member Mrs. Leicester Landon explains: "In 1958, we were studying psychology. We decided to connect what we were learning to our local situation.
"Many of us had contacts with the personnel of the state mental hospital at Mandeville and were aware that there must be many people in our area—men, women and chil­dren—who needed help with their emotional problems.
"You know, St. Tammany parish is a growing one (1950 census, 26,988; 1960, 38,183-a 41.5 per cent increase). Of course, the greater our population, the larger our towns get, the more people with problems we will have.
"The first thing that came to our minds was the in­creasing danger of juvenile delinquency. So far, the sit­uation has been kept in hand. But we didn't want to go to sleep and then be awakened by a situation bigger man we could handle. Our best bet was prevention/'
11    Ouorisco
The Delphians contacted Charles Rosenblum, director of the state department of hospitals, and asked him to con­sider the establishment of a guidance center in Covington. In the spring of 1960, after more than a year of negotia­tions, they were successful.
Hie Covington center, like the 12 others in Louisiana, is under the supervision of the department of hospitals and the state pays the professional personnel (psychia­trists, psychologists, social workers). However, most cen­ters have the flavor of a community project.
Many times the idea is a local one. A group from a city or parish requests the hospital board to set up a center in their area. In Covington, the group just happened to be the Delphians.
In the majority of cases, most guidance-center facilities are provided locally. The St. Tammany center occupies four small rooms in the Covington Junior High school-Secretarial help, supplies, etc., are bought with local mon­ey provided by the police jury, the towns of Covington, and Madisonville and private groups and individuals. The centers of some other areas get support from agen­cies like the United Fund,
The St. Tammany Parish Guidance Center opened its doors on a* two-day-per-week experimental basis in March, 1960. It now is open five days a week with full-time sec­retary and psychiatric social worker. Two days a week, the services of one psychologist and two psychiatrists are available. In March, six persons consulted the clinic. In October, there were 22 new cases.
Some patients hear about the clinic ap& come in on their own. Others are referred by social agencies, minis­ters, doctors, etc.                       
The center has been of great benefit to the St. Tam­many parish school system. "We are now able to reach children that we have never been able to reach before," says public school superintendent William O. Pitcher, who also is a member of the local guidance center's board of
directors.
He points out that teachers often have children in their classes with whom they can do nothing, because the roots of the problems are in the homes.
"A small school system like ours (8300 students) can­not afford the services of trained psychologists/9 Pitcher says, "and is ill-equipped to handle some problem chil­dren. However, we now are able to contact parents and tell them about the help that is offered at the center. We have done this in several cases already. Who knows how much juvenile delinquency, how many serious dis­ciplinary problems we will be able to prevent with saeh a facility as this?"
On these pages is a story in pictures illustrating a case involving a school child mat is being handled at the center. A lonely, withdrawn boy, he is finding people who will help him with his invisible, but heavy, burden.
Playing   the   following   roles   in   our "acted out" 
story are: boy: Leicester Louden Jr., 9 1/2 , 3di W. 29th, Covington. Mother: Miss Mary Louise Steele,
psychiatric social worker, father: Henry Mayfield, instruction  supervisor, St. Tammany parish schools