The Papago Psychology Service: A community mental health program on an American Indian reservation

A community psychology service run by the Papago Indian tribe and staffed largely by Papago Indians who have been trained as mental health workers is described. This service is unique among mental health services for Indians in that the tribe has complete control of the funds for the service and sets its own policies. It was developed for a rather traditional Indian group, and the culture, the traditions, and the wishes of the Papago community were respected. Consultation with medicine men was built into the program from the start, and adaptation of mental health techniques to fit the culture is stressed. Before this clinic was established, few mental health resources were directly available to the reservation. Similar to other Indian tribes, the Papagos are economically disadvantaged, with an unemployment rate of over 50%, low educational attainment, and very high rates of alcoholism, suicide, and vehicular accidents. The topics covered are the tribe's view of health programs for its people, the present Papago community and traditional means of treatment, traditional psychotherapy adapted to Papago culture, the indigenous Papago mental health worker, and the non-Indian professional consultant.     

Motion aftereffects and retinal motion

Two experiments are described in which it was investigated whether the adaptation on which motion aftereffects (MAEs) are based is a response to retinal image motion alone or to the motion signal derived from the process which combines the image motion signal with information about eye movement (corollary discharge). In both experiments observers either fixated a stationary point or tracked a vertically moving point while a pattern (in experiment 1, a grating; in experiment 2, a random-dot pattern) drifted horizontally across the field. In the tracking condition the adapting retinal motion was oblique. In the fixation condition it was horizontal. In every case in both conditions the MAE was horizontal, in the direction opposite to that of pattern motion. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that the adaptation is a response to the motion signal derived from the comparison of eye and image motion rather than to retinal motion per se. An alternative explanation is discussed.