It is estimated that perhaps one quarter of the six billion residents of this planet suffer from mental health problems. Moreover, practically all of the rest could no doubt profit from the offerings of mental health professionals because, for example, psychological counseling works much better for well people than it does for severely disturbed ones. But the number of current and future mental health practitioners, even if doubled and working around the clock, could treat only an infinitesimal fraction of these people. WBSI will create a program enabling these professionals to become metaprofessionals - architects of the therapeutic experience, using mass media and the Internet, training and supervising lay resources, building on the fact that under properly designed circumstances people are very good for each other. With such a program it would be possible to multiply the influence of their professionals a thousandfold.

WBSI has a distinguished record in this field, having been the first to prove the efficacy of self-directed therapeutic groups; first to develop structured leaderless therapy groups, guided by instructional audiotapes developed at WBSI and published by Bell and Howell, a program that research on different approaches to group therapy conducted at Stanford University rated first in safety and third in overall effectiveness out of 17 approaches studied; and first to use television to broadcast a series of therapy group meetings to leaderless groups meeting in the community, a program with highly positive results. In further explorations of the use of mass media to promote mental health, WBSI produced a film on a therapy group experience that won an Oscar for the best feature-length documentary