Community meeting: Review, update, and synthesis

The community meeting is a frequent regular meeting in a psychiatric ward o r institution that is attended by all staff and patients. It meets for the purpose of communication, ward management, or psychiatric treatment. The co nditions of the current hospital psychiatric treatment environment are very different from the treatment environment where the therapeutic community c oncept was first established, particularly in terms of the shortened length of hospital stay and the emphasis on pharmacologic rather than psychothera peutic 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 re view from both a theoretical and research perspective on the community meet ing is presented. A schema has been developed listing elements for practice in today's hospital climate.