It works closely with local services to assess needs, develop services, train practitioners and undertake research. The Centre is also committed to identifying good local practice and disseminating it nationally through an extensive programme of conferences and publications, its web site and its training activities. The Conference Unit of St. George's Hospital Medical School is the UK's leading provider of mental health conferences and courses. The Samaritans, founded in 1953, has nearly 200 local branches manned by some 23,000 volunteers and takes nearly two and a half million calls for help per year. This service is provided 24 hours every day by trained volunteers, and relies upon public donations.
Balanced attention is given to all aspects of sex therapy and education.
It is not a requirement of Society membership that a person be licensed in any profession or possess any standard of professional expertise or experience, or engage in any particular profession. Not all occupations in the health care field in California require professional licenses. The San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society was founded over 50 years ago. In 1989 it became a non-profit educational and research organization under its present name. Based on over 30 years of formal, empirical research designed to test the hypotheses developed by Joseph Weiss, MD from informal studies of the psychoanalytic process, the theory and clinical applications have found a diverse following from psychologists, social workers and marriage family and child counselors to psychoanalysts and psychiatrists and other mental health professionals.