Training in community psychology: Promises kept and yet to keep

Abstract

Community psychology as a scientific and professional discipline grew out of the deliberations of the 1965 Swampscott Conference. Its participants, mostly clinical psychologists, assembled to consider the implications for their discipline of the then nascent community mental health (CMH) movement (Bennett, Anderson, Cooper, Hassol, Klein, & Rosenblum, 1966). Conference participants reviewed the combination of sociopolitical factors and scientific findings which made unacceptable continuation of a mental health service delivery system determined to be inaccessible and unresponsive to the needs of significant segments of the population. Conference participants also considered the inadequacies of available knowledge about the cognitive, linguistic, interactional, and emotional lives of these people and recognized the need to design interventions syntonic with their respective cultural characteristics. Moreover, conference participants examined the significant imbalance between available and projected manpower resources and estimates of the demands and potential needs for services and concluded that innovation in response alternatives would have to consider the "whos" 'and "whens" as well as the "hows" of treatment.To solve the identified dilemmas and provide for needed new approaches, the conference participants recommended the development of a new discipline, to be labeled community psychology, which would address the interrelated albeit independent needs for knowledge and for innovative

Applied community psychology: Good news for the field from the field

“…The challenge provided by the reports included here is to increase the visibility and dissemination of viable, alternative ways of defining, recognizing, and responding to human needs. As discussed elsewhere (Lorion, 1984), the field's training strategies are just now becoming organized and coherent. The complementary step must be that the applications of its defining principles become described and widely recognized.…”

A history of Division 27 (Society for Community Research and Action).

“…Some community psychologists believed that existing diversity within community psychology training programs should not be interpreted as an absence of well-articulated and conceptually clear training models. Rather, they viewed training in community psychology as becoming more organized and coherent (Lorion, 1984).…”