The neighborhood service center: an innovation in preventive psychiatry.

Abstract

Directed toward low-income urban groups, the neighborhood service center is designed to detect pathology as it is expressed in the concrete problems of living, related often to welfare, housing, and employment, but also to more personal, emotional life stress. The center does not require appointments, has no waiting list, avoids an office atmosphere, shortens and informalizes intake procedures, and tries to help people at the point of crisis. Such psychosocial first aid is administered mainly by indigenous nonprofessionals who aim to develop techniques of individual self-help as well as greater social integration and cohesion in the community.