Innovative approaches to mental health problems are described. Conceptualizations about the following areas are outlined: psychiatry, the universe, and the community; theoretical malaise and community mental health; the relation of conceptual models to manpower needs; and mental health manpower and institutional change. Community programs and new sources of manpower are considered in terms of college students as companions to the mentally ill, pilot training projects for mental health counselors, new manpower for mental hospital service, training of human service aides, a neighborhood based mental health approach, psychological care for the poor, and a small community's mental health consultation program. New approaches in the schools include preventive aspects of school experience, prevention in the classroom through a behavioral sciences teaching program, enhancing a teacher's mental health function, history and evaluation of the St. Louis School Mental Health Project, a project's strategies in mental health consultation, early identification and prevention of emotional disturbance in a public school, project Re-ED (educational intervention in discordant child rearing systems), and a school district's program for schizophrenic, organic, and seriously disturbed children. Directions are indicated for future work. A bibliography cites 167 items. (SN)