Unitas: The clinic of the street—community mental health in practice

Abstract

Whatever happened to community mental health? It died. Well, almost. The community mental health movement of the 1960s and 1970s represented a radical departure from the conservatism of the traditional medical model which stressed the biological and intrapsychic origins of mental illness. Community mental health ideology emphasized social, cultural, and environmental factors responsible for mental illness and its prevention. Community mental health downplayed the “cult” of the professional and played up the healing power inherent in the social fields and support structures a person is already embedded in. Emphasis was placed on professionals working collaboratively with and through community caretakers in promoting social adjustment for all in a particular social environment. This article describes how community mental health ideology has been operationalized for over 33 years, serving functioning and dysfunctioning youth through developing their capacities to be caretakers to each other and to younger community children in the form of a symbolic family. The impact of such relationships and the place of the “therapeutic community meeting” or “family circle” as vehicles of therapeutic leverage, are profusely illustrated. Yes, community mental health still lives, even in these times of managed care.