Community Psychology Essay

824 Words4 Pages
INTRODUCTION The aim of this assignment is to compare and contrast community psychology and public health approaches to social problems. Community psychology is defined by Lewis, Lewis, Daniels, & D’Andrea (1998) as a “comprehensive helping framework of intervention strategies and services that promote the personal development and well-being of all individuals and communities”. Public health can be defined as consisting of organized efforts by society to improve the health of people (Gilbert1995). This assignment will provide a broad overview of the origins of community psychology and public health; as well as present the similarities and differences of both community psychology and public health and lastly look at how the two can work together. ORIGINS OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY AND PUBLIC HEALTH Community psychology originated in the united state of America as a result amongst growing concern from psychologist about the state of treatment facilities for mental health sufferer’s, due to the fact that there were high levels of neglect and lack of ongoing care for the mentally ill (Seedat, Cloete and Shochat, 1998). A vast number of mental health reforms movements were established to provide effective and practical support to the mentally ill; these reform movements consisted of therapeutic mental hospital, child guidance clinics and community health centers. Community psychology was officially formalized as an independent discipline in 1965 at a conference in Boston, Swampscott (Tut letter, 102). Public health on the other hand originated to counter the individualistic statue of clinical medicine and clinical psychology (Tut letter, 102). The development of public health can be traced to have originally developed in South Africa but has been largely implemented in the United States of America. The emergence of public health was particularly to counteract the
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