Community Psychology vs Public Healtth Approach

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According to Kendra Cherry (psychology.about.com), community psychology is all about how individuals relate to the society in which they live. Community psychology focuses on economic, environmental, political and social factors that influence the way in which people all over the world live their lives. It also focuses on social issues which contribute to, or cause, problems in various societies. Public health on the other hand is defined as being concerned with “preventing disease and distress” (Tutorial Letter 102/0/2013) in the community as a whole, not just the individual, before they occur. The public health approach promotes healthy living and with the prevention of illness associated with lifestyle (Tutorial Letter 102/0/2013). The public health approach was established in South Africa throughout the past 150 years, and can be divided into four regimes (or facets of the public health approach as a whole). The first regime was sanitary science (from the 1850’s to just after the First World War), and its main concern was the “management and movement of human waste products from the body into the environment, and from the environment into the human body”, (Tutorial Letter 102/0/2013). Microbes, which multiplied where ever there was dirt, especially human waste, was viewed as the primary cause of various diseases. Sanitary science focussed on the prevention of microbes from breeding and passing into people’s bodies, this was done through prohibitive laws and regulations regarding individuals behaviour. The next regime, social medicine, was established from around 1930’s to the 1950’s , in response to sanitary sciences’ failure to control individuals behaviours in the privacy of their own homes. Social medicine’s main focus was persuading individuals to take an interest in their own bodies and their own health (Tutorial Letter 102/0/2013), which was established

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