The article provides information on the book "Community Support System and Mental Health: Practice, Policy, and Research," edited by David E. Blegel and Arthur J. Naparstek. This is a collection of nineteen papers originally prepared for two conferences in 1980. The major premise underlying these studies is that since the mental health needs in the U.S. cannot be met by professionals alone, and since government agencies and programs are limited and inadequate for meeting those needs, people will have to help themselves, primarily through "community support systems." The distribution of the papers have been made in four parts: theory and research about community support systems, examples of programmatic interventions which utilize community support systems, analyses of the relationships between professionals and community support systems, and the policy implications of community support systems. The theoretical papers reflect the conceptual confusion which generally troubles the study of community support systems. The editors argue in their introductory chapter that a "catchments" area is not a community and that the neighborhood is the proper focus for studying community support systems. Other papers circumvent the issue by focusing on self-help and mutual support groups, as kinds of communities, without exploring the relationships between individuals who share specific common interest and others who are related to them, regardless of their physical or social propinquity.