lems before they start; (2) provide immediate and appropriate formsof intervention when and where they are most needed; and (3) enablethose who have been labeled as “deviant” to live as dignified, supported,and empowered lives as possible, preferably as contributingmembers of the community.For example, a community psychologist might (1) create and evaluatean array of programs and policies which help people control thestressful aspects of community and organizational environments; (2)assess the needs of a community and teach its members how to recognizean incipient problem and deal with it before it becomes intractable;or (3) study and implement more humane and effective ways for formerlyinstitutionalized populations to live productively in society’s mainstream.What Isn’t Community Psychology?*It may be useful to describe community psychology by distinguishingit from other disciplines with which it is closely allied. As we will explainmore fully below, community psychology is like public health inpromoting healthy environments and lifestyles, in considering problemsat the population (not just individual) level, and, especially, inadopting a preventive orientation. That is, community psychologiststry to prevent problems before they start, rather than waiting for themto become serious and debilitating. But community psychology differsfrom public health in its concern with social and mental, as well asphysical health, and the quality of life in general.
In many ways, community psychology is like social work, except
that it has a strong research orientation. Community psychologists are
committed to the notion that nothing is more practical than rigorous,
well-conceived research directed at social problems.
Community psychology is like social psychology and sociology in
taking a group or systems approach to human behavior, but it is more
unabashedly applied than those disciplines and more concerned with
using psychological knowledge to resolve social problems.
It borrows techniques from industrial and organizational psychology,
but tends to deal with community organizations, human service
delivery systems, and support networks. Plus, it focuses simultaneously
on the problems of clients and workers as opposed to solely the
goals and values of management. It is concerned with issues of social
regulation and control, and with enhancing the positive characteristics
and coping abilities of relatively powerless social groups such as the
poor, minorities, children, and the elderly.
As discussed in chapter 2, although some community psychologists
came from, or were trained in, social psychology, the most important field of comparison
for understanding community psychology is clinical psychology. Community psychology
shares clinical psychology’s action orientation and its goal of helping people in distress.
An important difference between the community and the clinical orientation is the
helping person’s point of intervention, in terms of both location and timing. Community
psychology arose largely out of dissatisfaction with the clinician’s tendency to locate
mental health problems within the individual. Community psychologists are more likely
to see threats to mental health in the social environment, or in lack of fit between
individuals and their environment. They focus on health rather than on illness, and on
enhancing
the competencies of individuals, small groups, organizations,
communities, or higher policy levels. This focus on the person-inenvironment
is also emphasized by community psychologists outside
the United States (e.g., Orford, 1992; Thomas & Veno, 1992).
The timing of intervention also helps to distinguish community
psychology, which is more proactive, from clinical psychology, which
is more reactive. One of the cofounders of community psychology,
Emory Cowen, liked to illustrate this with an anecdote that by the time
a child sees a therapist, there has already been a long process of difficulty,
informal help-seeking, and frustration on everyone’s part—the
child, the family, teachers, friends. In most cases, the clinical psychologist
cannot deal directly with the early stages of this process, but enters
the picture at the end, after the problem has worsened, become
more complicated and difficult to solve. The community approach and
this book deal with all that came before.
Clinical psychology did produce the community mental health
movement, which served as a kind of launching pad for community
psychology. The community mental health movement has been characterized
by efforts to deliver services in the local community instead
of in a hospital or clinic, to emphasize services other than long-term
hospitalization, and to use outpatient services as much as possible. The
community movement is also dedicated to the development of innovative
services and working relationships with other agencies in the
community, for the client’s benefit. We no longer follow the policy of
isolating the repulsive deviant in pursuit of some chimerical goal of
cure. Those adopting the community mental health perspective work
to support people in the local community. When hospitalization does
occur, the goal of treatment is not to cure illness, but to restore the individual’s
equilibrium so that he or she may be returned to the community
as rapidly as possible.
This preference for community-based, in contrast to institutionbased,
treatment constitutes not only a perspective but also an ideology
or a set of beliefs that characterize community psychologists. In
contrast to the clinical perspective, the community perspective directs
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