The concepts of culture-bound belief systems and explanatory models focused on reproduction and contraception are applied to a case of a married Jewish woman seeking to interrupt an unwanted pregnancy. Discrepancies between the lay belief system held by the woman, and the clinical belief system of the medical mediators of contraception and abortion, have created a situation where none of the alternatives at the woman's disposal seems correct: the options available for preventing pregnancy are unacceptable or inefficient; having a child is also not acceptable; and termination of unwanted pregnancy by abortion is ethically and morally wrong. The "no-win" situation results from medical ethnocentrism and failure to interpret the context of meanings and norms within which health decisions are constructed.

An examination of the limits to the cultural awareness of immigrant therapists raises questions about the context and boundaries of “professional” knowledge. The paper examines alternative models of the therapeutic encounter available to therapists and the influence of personal background and experience on the therapists' actual views of that encounter. Concentrating on verbal expressions as reflections of the therapists' conceptualizations of themselves within the therapeutic encounter, the study finds that most of the therapists seem to ignore or gloss cultural differences in talking about their work, while referring frequently to these same differences in talking about their personal experiences as immigrants.

An analysis of the written responses to a radio series on family planning suggests that radio can offer a nonthreatening way to disseminate information on sensitive and controversial social issues, and that it is possible to tentatively identqy subgroups with special needs.Family planning is a problematic and controversial issue throughout the world (11, 15). It touches not only upon fertility, sexuality, the family, arid the roles of men and women but also on planning for the future, intervening in divine authority, and the natural order of events-all emotion-laden areas. In some cases the concept of family planning clashes with organized religion, political interests, or ethnic biases.Thus, family planning can be a taboo subject of discussion in public and even in private (12).In ii country in which there is strong pro-natal social pressure or in which people experience social censure when they seek family-planning services, a mass media program can make available information about family planning and related services, and it can allow individuals to ask for specific help with relative safety from disclosure and no risk of censure. Such a program can also augment existing services that previously may have been found to be unsatisfactory. The purpose of this article is to illuminate, through the analysis of letters written in response to an informative radio series on family planning and of a survey of Ronny Shtarkshall is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Public Health and in the School of Education at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Eileen Basker teaches sociology and anthropology in the School of Education at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and in the School of Medicine at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva. The authors would like to thank the research department of Kol Yisra'el for making available to them both general listening surveys and special surveys as cited in the references. 69

Guiding principles of the Community Mental Health Center are comprehensiveness and continuity of care. The Community Mental Health Center in Jaffa, Israel, undertook a project in community intervention which, in effect, applied these principles on a community-wide basis. By helping to establish and sustain an inter-agency coordinating body, the CMHC increased the coordination and cooperation between caretaker agencies. This application of the principle of "continuity of care" on a wide scale had a snowball effect on the community with benefits far beyond the immediate mental health sphere.

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