Community Psychology and Global Climate Change: Introduction to the Special Section

Global climate change is not just a distant environmental or future problem but a crisis that has a clear human face already causing the suffering of millions around the globe. It is an issue of high relevance for community psychologists and the communities we work with but has received little attention within the field of community psychology. This special section is intended to promote more thinking and dialogue on this important topic. Six articles are presented that feature both theoretical consideration and empirical research related to global climate change and related environmental issues.     

PROPOSAL TO ESTABLISH AN INDEPENDENT CENTER FOR ADVANCED STUDY IN RELIGION AND SCIENCE

This “proposal” is the present form of an evolving statement, the product of many minds who have spent many years wrestling with the problem of human values in an age of science. It may be said to be a declaration on the part of one of Zygon's sponsors, the Center for Advanced Study in Theology and the Sciences (CASTS) of Meadville/Lombard Theological School, to say it has reached adolescence and must establish itself as an independent and responsible adult institution to carry on its work in the world. The declaration presents to the community of those concerned with religion in an age of science a proposal for the Center's future work. The document is already the product of several cycles of feedba.ck from a hundred or two of that community. It is here presented to a larger portion of that community as a contribution to the thinking and planning of all who would provide the ideas and institutional support for religion in an age of science. It is also presented with the hope of receiving furthur input of ideas and substance to shape the CASIRAS program. - EDITOR.     

Activity settings as the unit of analysis: A theoretical basis for community intervention and development

Theory, methods, and action develop within context, one of which is the intellectual climate of an era. Community psychology is directly and indirectly interactive with many intellectual currents, such as postmodernism, semiotics, hermeneutics, and dialogism. These ideas are discussed as they impact on community psychology, with an emphasis on the reemergence of meaning as a central condition of psychology and community. Meaning is of key importance to the unifying concept in the transactional theoretical model which is presented. How this model might serve as a conceptual framework for an asset approach to community intervention and development is discussed. Increasingly, it is recognized that the development of theory to guide community research and action is necessary to advance intervention and to realize the potential of community psychology. It is argued that community psychology is positioned by concepts and practice squarely at the point of emerging thought, and can make fuondational contributions to general social science. The next article in this special section illustrates concepts of this model in an early education program and the remaining article illustrates the influence of ecocultural factors.     

Community meeting: review, update, and synthesis

The community meeting is a frequent regular meeting in a psychiatric ward or institution that is attended by all staff and patients. It meets for the purpose of communication, ward management, or psychiatric treatment. The conditions of the current hospital psychiatric treatment environment are very different from the treatment environment where the therapeutic community concept was first established, particularly in terms of the shortened length of hospital stay and the emphasis on pharmacologic rather than psychotherapeutic methods of treatment. However, even with these changes, an admixture of psychopharmacologic treatment and therapeutic community principles has been advocated as an effective, realistic, and desirable treatment modality in today's hospital environment. A synthesis of an extensive literature review from both a theoretical and research perspective on the community meeting is presented. A schema has been developed listing elements for practice in today's hospital climate.     

‘Someone to talk to who'll listen’: addressing the psychosocial needs of children and families

The paper presents the Lewisham Community Child and Family Service (LCCFS), a community‐based intervention providing psychosocial help for children, young people, parents and families. The service is focused on early intervention, prevention and promotion in the improvement of local health. It works under a service framework based on inter‐agency collaboration, and a counselling model based on community and interpersonal partnerships, grounded in personal construct theory (Kelly, 1955). The policy demands and local need for accessible and acceptable mental health are discussed, and quantitative and qualitative findings of the needs assessment preceding the establishment of the LCCFS are presented, supporting the need for community mental health provision. The feasibility for the LCCFS to reconcile and meet the policy demands and the needs of parents with respect to child psychosocial help and services are discussed. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Investigation concerning the possibility of rational ethics

Ethical behavior such as self‐sacrifice and striving for juistice—the natural striving for a general prosperity for humans—is not mainly learned but is carried by a natural altruism from one generation to the next. It is based on group (rather than individual) altruism which has concentrated on protection of the aged (as preservers of knowledge) and the young (as preservers of future generations).

It is proposed that the strongest possible nature form of community is the “amorisation community"—in effect, one in which love produces more love. A case is presented for the creation of a world scientific and cultural transformation based on the ethics of the “amorisation community.”     

Community Organization and Planning Consultation

This paper focuses upon the role of the occupational therapist as a health agent with resultant responsibilities for participation in health planning and preventative program development. Included is a discussion of community problem solving methods, an overview of community organization, and principles of preventative intervention. A community-wide assessment methodology upon which to base planning decisions is presented. The principles of prevention, community assessment, and occupational therapy program development are emphasized through a discussion of a mental health model which evolved in a military community.     

Parents and peer group as mediators of the effect of community structure on adolescent problem behavior

Used a sample of 207 single-parent families residing in 104 small, Midwestern communities to test hypotheses regarding the link between community context and adolescent conduct problems and psychological distress. For boys, community disadvantage had a direct affect on psychological distress, while it indirectly boosted the probability of conduct problems by disrupting parenting and increasing affiliation with deviant peers. Community disadvantage was unrelated to the deviant behavior or emotional well-being of girls. Proportion of single-parent households in the community had a direct effect on girls' conduct problems. It also contributed indirectly to girls' conduct problems by increasing the probability of involvement with deviant peers. Possible explanations for these gender differences are provided. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Miami, November 1994. Work on this project was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (MH48165) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD27724). Journal Paper No. 16629 of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economic Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa. Project No. 3320.     

The family's conception of accountability and competence: a new approach to the conceptualization and assessment of family stress.

Clinicians and researchers have a strong interest in understanding how families respond to stress. Often, they begin their analyses by attempts to estimate the seriousness or magnitude of the stressful events impinging on the families they observe. Until now, they have relied on two strategies. First, they attempt to develop objective or external indicators of the magnitude of the stress of the events. The problem here is that the family's own perceptions and experiences are not properly weighted. The second strategy depends heavily or exclusively on the family's perceptions of the events. However, these perceptions are often a product of the family's efforts to cope with the stress since the organization and perception of meaning in events is a fundamental part of family coping. Thus, this approach cannot disentangle the stress inherent in the events from the family's efforts to cope with it. This article explores a third alternative. The social community in which the family lives often provides a coherent frame of meanings for most events. It not only defines the magnitude of the event but it also defines how accountable the family is for producing the event in the first place. A method for assessing these community frameworks is presented. Initial results suggest that there is not only a coherent community framework attributing magnitude and family accountability to a large number of stressful events impinging the family but, also, that these community attributions are embedded in a community concept of family development.     

Exploring the meaning of participation in a community art project: A case study on the Seeming project

In Australia, community art has drawn significant research attention in regard to its potential as a community development strategy. Despite the fact that researchers have presented evidence for the positive developmental outcomes of participation in community art projects, a gap remains in understanding how and why people's participation in a community art project can lead to those positive outcomes. This research explored the meaning of participation in a community art project from the vantage point of the people who experience it. Ten participants were interviewed about their participation in a community art project (The Seeming) held in Bendigo, Australia. Following thematic analyses we identified three themes of how participants viewed their participation in a community arts project. These themes included giving voice to the silenced, creation of social connections and challenging and reproducing stereotypes. Participation means coming together and the findings highlight the potential of community arts projects for promoting the creation of new relationships and new stories about community. However, there are also problematic stories about self and others that were not deconstructed. It is argued that the settings in which different groups join can be meaningfully extended if there is an explicit concern with consciousness raising and deconstruction of normative stories. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business ethics and computer ethics: The view from Poland

An Aristotelian approach to understanding and teaching business ethics is presented and defended. The newly emerging field of computer ethics is also defined in an Aristotelian fashion, and an argument is made that this new field should be called “information ethics”. It is argued that values have their roots in the life and practices of a community; therefore, morality cannot be taught by training for a special way of reasoning. Transmission of values and norms occurs through socialization — the process by which an individual absorbs not only values but also the whole way of life of his or her community. It follows that business ethics and information ethics can be considered kinds of socialization into a profession: role learning and acquiring a new self-identification. This way of understanding fields of applied ethics is especially important for their proper development in Central-Eastern Europe because of endemic factors which are the result of recent political developments there.     

Social networks: A link between psychiatric epidemiology and community mental health

This paper examines the concept of social network as a mediating construct linking psychiatric epidemiology and community mental health. A selective review of studies investigating the structural and interactional features of the social networks of psychiatrically impaired persons is presented and the implications of their results are discussed. It is concluded that social networks provide a unifying framework potentially capable of linking empirical research with clinical practice.This work is supported in part by grant #AA03506-04 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.     

Issues and Strategies for Studying Latino Student Dropout at the Local Level

Latino student dropout is a national concern that must also be addressed strategically in local communities. Although national studies are important for pointing out areas of concern, local studies can provide more specific information for local policy development and implementation. This paper presents an example of local community-initiated needs assessment that addresses issues of Latino access to education. Focus groups and interviews were held with Latino students, parents, and community leaders as well as teachers and administrators. Issues and strategies of the needs assessment process are presented, which include involving key stakeholders, engaging community members as research partners, and engaging school personnel. General findings are presented and linked to accomplishments of the needs assessment process, such as increasing community awareness of issues and building commitment to implement strategies identified to reduce Latino student dropout.     

Developing civic engagement in university education: predicting current and future engagement in community services

One of the important goals of education is for students to learn to be responsible civic participants. Thus, the time students spend in college is invaluable. It is important that students learn to participate and be responsible citizens of their community during their time in college (Giles and Eyler in Mich J Community Serv Learn 1:77–85, 1994). In this study, a program to help achieve this important educational goal is presented and evaluated. This involved the examination of the impact of actual participation in a community service activity on students’ changes in attitudes and future intentions. A path model based on predictions drawn from place attachment theory was developed and tested to examine how participating in a community service activity affected students’ place attachment and interests in community service. Two-hundred-and-nine university students participated in the study. Results confirmed the hypothesized model. Implications for enhancing student involvement in their communities and encouraging their development into responsible citizens were discussed.     

ABSTRACTS OF LITERATURE

From a community mental health center, a psychiatric nurse, under the supervision of a psychiatrist, presents a case in which she used family therapy. Dynamics and treatment techniques are presented. It is felt that this is an important technique for psychiatric nurses to use in such a setting.     

Using Geospatial Research Methods to Examine Resource Accessibility and Availability as it Relates to Community Participation of Individuals with Serious Mental Illnesses

Greater community participation among individuals with serious mental illnesses is associated with better psychosocial and health outcomes. Typically, studies examining community participation have utilized self‐report measures and been conducted in limited settings. The introduction of methodological advances to examining community participation of individuals with serious mental illnesses has the potential to advance the science of community mental health research and invigorate the work of community psychologists in this area. This study employed an innovative geospatial approach to examine the relationship between community participation and resource accessibility (i.e., proximity) and availability (i.e., concentration) among 294 individuals utilizing community mental health services throughout the United States. Findings suggest small but significant associations between community participation and the accessibility and availability of resources needed for participation. Furthermore, findings demonstrate the importance of car access for individuals residing in both urban and non‐urban settings. The methods and results presented in this study have implications for community mental health research and services and provide an illustration of ways that geospatial methodologies can be used to investigate environmental factors that impact community inclusion and participation of individuals with serious mental illnesses.     

A Rogerian Perspective on Empathic Patterns in Southern African Healing

This article offers a reflective comment on the topics presented in this special issue. These topics address the concept of community psychology from various perspectives presented in three thematic categories: The states and form of community psychology; the application of community psychology to vulnerable groups and the concept of service delivery and methodologies. The author highlights trends gleaned from the articles, implicitly or explicitly—that of the efficacy of community psychology as a credible branch of psychology, changes needed in training programmes and the idea of the circularity that is community which exists because of the individual who exists because of community.     

Merging Professional Training and Community Engagement Agendas: A Case Study

This case study explored the emancipatory foundations of community work through a schools-based peer support intervention. We use a case study approach to describe the context in which the intervention was developed, its emancipatory theoretical foundations, and the project's implementation components and process. The findings suggest that reflexivity is a useful tool for community engagement and for articulating tensions that arise in the enactment of community participation, empowerment and conscientisation. The intervention presented a unique opportunity to reflect on the operationalisation of theoretical concepts in community psychology, and to train professional psychologists for reflexive community work.     

To Serve or Not to Serve: Ethical and Policy Implications

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) is one of the nation's more influential health‐related non‐profit organizations. It plays a large role in shaping health policy by commissioning panels to develop “white papers” describing research and recommendations on a variety of health topics. These white paper publications are often used to help make policy decisions at the legislative and executive levels. Such a prominent institution might seem like a natural ally for policy‐related collaborative efforts. As community psychologists, we strongly endorse efforts to positively influence public policy at the national level. However, while serving on influential panels and commissions like the IOM might seem to be very much part of the ethos of our discipline, there are occasions when such institutions are pursuing a mission that inadvertently has the potential to instigate divisive friction among community activists and organizations. A case study is presented whereby I describe my decision not to accept an invitation to serve on a controversial IOM panel. I explore the ethical challenges regarding maintaining my independence from this institution and its attempt to redefine chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), as well as the process of searching for alternative avenues for collaborating with community activists to influence policy related to these debilitating illnesses.