The Meaning of Community in Rural Mental Health

Abstract

Rural mental health came into prominence as a separate specialty within mental health in the 1970s, this development coinciding with a startling trend toward reverse urban-rural migration, documented in the 1980 census [1]. A growing body of literature [2], national and regional conferences,1 university curricular offerings,2 and visible leadership all bespeak its timeliness and its inherent appeal to a diverse group of professionals. The social instability that the changing demography inflicted on rural America resounded through the boom towns, retirement havens, and traditional small towns across the continent. The sheer numbers of the immigrants, motivated by disparate goals, threatened precisely what they were seeking [3]. In their quest for a rural utopia, however defined, the newcomers were destined for frustration as they found not their idyllic, pastoral sanctuary, but an already complex society burdened with its own historic problems.