Based on a North Carolina feasibility study (1967-73) which focused on development of a pattern for providing comprehensive mental health services to rural people, this guide deals with measuring and monitoring stress in the community. Emphasizing the "proactive" efforts developed in a stress model for Vance and Franklin counties, this booklet details the following: (1) Frame of Reference (the events, life conditions or variations, which impinge upon the individual and the individual's response at personal, family, and community levels); (2) Monitoring Public Events (use of newspaper headlines to develop a survey instrument to measure stress and use of a panel of local people to report and evaluate local stressful events); (3) Approaches to Developing Community Stress Indices (survey of helping resources; single variables; multiple variables); (4) Monitoring Private Events: Individual Perceptions and Responses to Stress (selection of the Schedule of Recent Experiences instrument; instrument standardization on a rural population; testing of instrument relevance to emotional disorder with State mental hospital patients, psychiatric outpatients, and medical outpatients); (5) School Area Analysis: A Sociodemographic Statistical Tool; (6) Applications (instruments and procedures; uses of the information system, barriers to utilization, learnings). (JC)