Rapport by Mail.

From earliest times, man has communicated thoughts, requests, and feelings by letter. Hundreds of volumes of collected letters, published and unpublished, exist today. The fields of business and education are replete with instructions and examples for appropriate letters. It is surprising that social workers have not long since defined effective letter writing in a social work context. Has letter writing been viewed as another form of paperwork? Although the author does not claim to have based this paper on rigorous research, she has reviewed many sequences of letters exchanged between psychiatric hospital staff and relatives of patients. Many relatives lived several thousand miles away; letters were chosen as an economical way to communicate with them. Some elements of this rapport are discussed here. The first letter to a relative was the hardest to write. What could be assumed about the addressee's level of understanding and feelings? If the patient was able, she might tell what she knew about the relative's attitudes and give permission to write.