Principles of community psychiatry

Our primary goal in community psychiatry is to satisfy the service needs of a bounded population for whose mental health we have accepted responsibili ty and accountability. We base our programs on public health practice model s: These direct us to focus on segments of our population which are current ly exposed to harmful bio-psycho-social factors that increase their risk of becoming mentally ill. We focus on preventing psychosocial problems or the ir consequences by reducing their population rates: either the incidence of new cases (primary prevention), the prevalence of all existing cases (seco ndary prevention), and the rates of residual disability (tertiary preventio n). We increase our efficiency and effectiveness by organizing our program on the basis of crisis theory which demands that we reach out to people in crisis and provide them with immediate guidance and help to master their cu rrent difficulties during the short period when they are open to influence and amenable to change in ways that have long term mental health consequenc es. We spread our own influence by organizing support groups and we multipl y many-fold our impact on the huge problems involved in covering the needs of our population by recruiting the collaboration of other professional car egivers and non-professional helpers. We enhance the mental health componen t in the daily work of all caregiving agencies and institutions and individ ual professionals in the community through education and mental health cons ultation and collaboration. We also reach out to assist non-professional ca regiving individuals and organizations, especially those who provide mutual help to fellow sufferers. In our latest work we are currently identifying harmful practices in our caregiving systems that actually harm those people whom we are trying to help. We are in the process of developing methods fo r reducing this system-generated damage.