P.B.H. Asks 150 Volunteers For Mental Hospitals

One hundred fifty volunteers from the Summer School will be needed by the Phillips Brooks House Mental Hospital Committee to aid the mentally ill.

A meeting to describe the work planned will be held at PBH--across from Littauer Center on Kirkland St.--this Wednesday night at 8 p.m. Alene Wilson and Frank Cashman, directors of the committee, will discuss the program.

They will say that volunteers are to work in both the children's and adult wards of the Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham, taking patients for walks, organizing parties and baseball games, and taking groups on trips and picnics. The hospital does not have a staff large enough to take patients outdoors on these activities, and so depends on Summer School volunteers to "create a normal environment and activity program," frequently "a spring-board to a cure," William F. McLaughlin, Superintendent of the Hospital, claims.

The program is scheduled to begin on July 7, and volunteers will take groups out any day from Monday through Thursday, in the morning or afternoon. The program has created a great deal of interest in the Cambridge community, and studies are being made of it by groups from Harvard and M.I.T.