Community psychology studies individuals within their social contexts and relationships. It aims to prevent mental illness and improve care for those experiencing issues. Critics argue we lack knowledge for effective prevention programs and risk violating civil rights. Responsible professionals recognize limited knowledge and must decide whether new approaches are worth potential risks, operating wisely based on available information.

1. A critical evaluation of
community psychology

2. By: Zill-e-Huma

3. Community psychology:
Community psychology studies the individuals' contexts within
communities and the wider society, and the relationships of the
individual to communities and society.

4. The contribution of community psychology:
◉ Importance of social and environmental factors in derterming and changing
psychological has encouraged clinicians to look not only at the woes the individual
patient but at the social sourrounding in which they occur.
◉ Ways of better serving the larger population portion previously neglected, become
more evident .
◉ Programs using the concepts and methods of consultation,crisis intervention and
short-term therpy,and non-professtional helpers in new roles have been launched
and appear promising.
◉ The goals of the community movements are many, ranging from the primary
prevention of the mental disorders to improving the care of the presently disturbed.

5. Cont.…
◉ Settings in which patients are treated are changing. Large state hospitals have been
decentrilized or reorganized into units each serving people from a particular geographic
area. Psychiatric units are being developed in local,general hospitals. Thus, there is
more contanct between the community and the hospitals.
◉ In the effort to serve the largest possible number of people,methods of crisis intervention
and brief therapy have been developed.

6. Do we know enough to talk seriously about
prevention?
◉Prevention is the broadest most ambitious and potentially most important goal of
community psychology. It is also the area in which community psychology is most
vulnerable to criticism.
◉Even if we could agree on what kind of men an women we wanted to produce we
could not predict the outcome on a given family due to the multiplicity of uncontrolled
variables, thus primary prevention of mental illness has remained largely an article of
scientific faith rather than an applicable scientific truth.
◉Their main concern was that we lack the knowledge to launch effective preventive
programs as well as clear criteria and consensus as to the desired state of positive
emotional functioning we would wish to obtain.

7. Cont.
◉Dunharam 1965: community psychiatry asserts that it is society rather than the
individual which should be considered the patient.
◉ while the importance of psych cultural factors in molding individual personality has
been recognized for some time we still know too little about the social etiology of mental
disorder to have a firm base for social intervention.
◉Without sufficient knowledge and with little understanding of how social change is
effective Dunharam question the ability of ambitious community psychiatrist and
psychologist to devise effective techniques.
◉Dunharam 1965 was pleased at the prospect of hospital psychiatrists and office
practitioners coming into closer contact with the real life and problems of the community,
he believes that they must not desert their traditional task of working with the severely
mentally ill.
◉While attempting to be an agent of social change, the clinician risks losing the unique
skills of diagnosis and therapy upon which his professional and ultimately his social
contribution rests.

8. Cont.
◉Responsible community psychologists and psychiatrists recognize as do their critics,
that a sufficient base of established knowledge still does not exist.
◉This is true in any field, but more true in human helping sciences.
◉Faced with people seriously in need, they will have to decide to trying a new
approach, worth the potential risk and operate as wisely as possible on the basis of
available knowledge.

9. • Dunham 1965 challenges coumunity psychiatry “if a psychiatrist thinks
that he can organize true community to move towards a mnore healthy
state, I suggest that he run for some public office. This would certainly add
to his experience and give him some conception as to wheather or not the
community is ready to be moved in the direction that he regards as
mentally hygenic.
• In the professiuonal role the power to change social policy is limited,
• Whatever ones position , it is clear that if mental health professional enter
into social action they cannot act foolioshly or unprofessionaly.
DO WE HAVE THE
POWER?

10. Cont. examples:
◉Psychiatrist were asked to judge the mental health of a candidate for the presidency
in 1964 a surprisingly large number of psychiatrist ventured opinions, though none has
personally examined the man.
◉Second, the recommendation of the president of APA advocating the development
of psychologically active drugs to be given to societies' leaders in order to reduce the
likelihood of war, racism, and other social ills.
◉To avoid such abuses of professional experts, psychologist and psychiatrist have a
great obligation to limit their action to areas of trained competence.

11. The threat to civil rights:
◉ Prevention programs are necessarily conceived for the well-being of the larger
population rather than to serve the needs of individuals.
◉ Every organized society must exert controls and limit the freedom of individuals if it is to
protect the well-being health and safety of all.
◉ Once resisted ,we now accept compulsory education , fair employment practices
,vaccination and quarantine, dog and car licensing and numerous other measures as
necessary social restraints.
◉ Community psychiatry could be used by the powerful in society to control social or
political deviants.
◉ An essential principle in democracy is that the individual be allowed the greatest possible
freedom to live as he chooses.

12. Cont. example:
◉Working with the police ,the local heath agency developed a preventive
program aimed at reducing family conflict ,broken homes, and the
attendant stress on children . If a family fight came at police attention ,
marriage or family counselors were brought in help to resolve family
problems .On one occasion neighbors called the police because of loud
and angry noises in a nearby house. The police came and quieted the
family down ; the next day they were visited by a counselor.
◉The family went to court clamming that their rights had been violated.

13. FURTHER PROBLEMS IN THE
COMMUNITY APPROACH
◉The danger in secondary prevention.
◉Hospitalization and community-centered care.
◉The place of psychotherapy.