Community Psychology Principles Research Articles

Statement on the effects of law enforcement in school settings.

School-based law enforcement (SBLE) have become increasingly common in U.S.schools over recent decades despite the controversy surrounding their presence and lack of consensus around their associated benefits and harms. Drawing on the history and evidence base regarding SBLE, we advocate for an end to SBLE programs. Grounding our argument in principles of Community Psychology and positive youth development, we outline how the presence and actions of SBLE negatively affect individual students as well as school systems, with particularly harmful outcomes for students with minoritized and marginalized identities. Research on SBLE and school crime does not provide consistent evidence of positive impacts, and many studies find null effects for the relationship between SBLE and school crime or increases in crime and violence in schools. Though funding for SBLE is often prompted by high-profile acts of gun violence in schools, evidence suggests that SBLE neither prevents these incidents, nor lessens the severity when they do occur. Thus, we advocate for removing law enforcement from school settings and redirecting resources into inclusive, evidence-informed responses that are generally safer and more effective than SBLE. We close by outlining the policy landscape governing SBLE programs and ways communities can lobby for change.

A Coproduced Traumatic Bereavement Therapeutic Group for Moroccan Adolescents Affected by the Grenfell Tower Fire

There have been increasing calls to coproduce psychological initiatives and services for children and young people to improve access to mental health services and service user experience. This paper outlines the development of an innovative therapeutic group for young people affected by collective trauma and loss who were reluctant to engage with mainstream services following the Grenfell Tower fire. The June 2017 apartment building fire was one of the largest and deadliest to occur in the United Kingdom (UK) in decades, with 72 deaths. The project’s central principle was partnership and coproduction with potential users and offering a culturally appropriate service. Its aim was to meet the mental health and other needs of young people, support them through their bereavement and trauma, and to improve access to mental health services by addressing the barriers they reported. The group approach used community psychology and systemic principles, narrative therapy concepts, creative arts, and collective memorialization. Semi-structured focus groups were conducted with 14 Moroccan-origin adolescents, 13 whom identify as Muslim. A thematic analysis was conducted. Findings indicated the benefits of collective memorialization and therapeutic groups, such as improved emotional expression, recognition of shared Grenfell-related experiences, strengthened social support networks and subjugated narratives, and reduced social isolation and stigma. The evaluation findings indicated that the group’s coproduction and collaboration between statutory services, potential/service users, and community organizations improved community engagement, access to mental health services, and service provision for children and young people from Moroccan and Muslim backgrounds. Note: Any views expressed in this service evaluation are of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of their employers.

Recommendations for Integrating a Social Justice Framework into Clinical Practice: A qualitative analysis with implications for psychology training programs

Social justice is a frequently used buzz word yet an abstract concept in clinical training. As a result, there is minimal guidance on how to implement social justice in clinical practice, which leads to training gaps, uncertainty, and discomfort among clinicians serving historically oppressed populations. This study examined how to integrate the social justice principles of community psychology into clinical psychology practice among doctoral students. The integration of the following social justice principles were analyzed: addressing oppression and social context, utilizing strength-based approaches, facilitating empowerment, acknowledging and managing privilege, and effective advocacy. We utilized qualitative methods to complete 26 one-on-one interviews and a focus group with 5 participants to understand student experiences and explore how they applied the above social justice principles to their clinical practice. Through an iterative process, doctoral student responses were synthesized into a list of recommendations on how to integrate a social justice framework into clinical work. The primary results from this study suggest that students in clinical-community psychology doctoral programs try to use client-centered strategies to understand their clients’ experiences of oppression and incorporate social context and a strengths-based approach into multiple aspects of practice, such as treatment planning and advocacy to connect clients to resources. Students also reported managing their privilege through internal self-reflection and occasional self-disclosure during therapy with clients. However, despite the desire to use socially just practices, several training gaps and needs emerged. These gaps included the need to identify methods of measuring and confirming client empowerment as well as supervisory and institutional support for effective advocacy work. Thus, implications for integrating social justice principles into clinical-community psychology programs, clinical psychology, and related disciplines are discussed.

"From the World of Falsehood to the World of Truth": Recovery and reflexivity in Clubs of Families with Alcohol-related Problems in Crete.

The potential for a critical realist community psychology in the Greek context is not yet apparent. In this article, we present the results of a qualitative study that adheres to critical realism and community psychology principles. The study's focus is the lives of members of the 12 Clubs of Families with Alcohol-related Problems (CFAP) that operate on Crete. The empirical material was derived from fieldwork notes, minutes from CFAP weekly meetings, and interviews provided by 13 CFAP members. Participants conceptualized the path from alcohol addiction to sobriety as a transition from a world of falsehood and deceit ("fractured reflexivity") to a world of truth and communalism ("communicative reflexivity"). The article argues that CFAP's "regime of truth" prioritizes communicative reflexivity as the desirable mode of reflexivity, while at the same time contributing to an ambivalent political stance towards the oppressive structural arrangements that promote addiction.

Substance Use Research with Indigenous Communities: Exploring and Extending Foundational Principles of Community Psychology.

Many Indigenous communities are concerned with substance use (SU) problems and eager to advance effective solutions for their prevention and treatment. Yet these communities also are concerned about the perpetuation of colonizing, disorder-focused, stigmatizing approaches to mental health, and social narratives related to SU problems. Foundational principles of community psychology-ecological perspectives, empowerment, sociocultural competence, community inclusion and partnership, and reflective practice-provide useful frameworks for informing ethical community-based research pertaining to SU problems conducted with and by Indigenous communities. These principles are explored and extended for Indigenous community contexts through themes generated from seven collaborative studies focused on understanding, preventing, and treating SU problems. These studies are generated from research teams working with Indigenous communities across the United States and Canada-inclusive of urban, rural, and reservation/reserve populations as well as adult and youth participants. Shared themes indicate that Indigenous SU research reflects community psychology principles, as an outgrowth of research agendas and processes that are increasingly guided by Indigenous communities. At the same time, this research challenges these principles in important ways pertaining to Indigenous-settler relations and Indigenous-specific considerations. We discuss these challenges and recommend greater synergy between community psychology and Indigenous research.

Participación comunitaria de personas adultas mayores: experiencias metodológicas en Occidente

Nowadays, elderly requires social spaces that allows them to reflect together on the opportunities and challenges of this period of life. This article presents the results of the methodological approach of the project ED 2309, that is part of Social Action Department in University of Costa Rica, Sede de Occidente. The project intended to provide a place for various groups of elders to reunite and build some responses to their daily personal and community challenges. This space has also generated personal,group and community tools to older adults in different communities of San Ramon. In addition, to the guidance provided to them in the analysis of specific themes related to this stage of life cycle, the project aimed to create networks of older adults, for them to share their life experiences. The methodological approach in the project allowed these people to build knowledge that aids them to improve their life quality.This project is one of the few that to visit diverse communities and work with the elderly in their own places rather than to stay in university classrooms. These respond to a commitment to these population, taking the University to them and not vice versa.In general, the purpose of this paper is to describe the themes, methodologies and achievements that this project has had over five years, in the communities of La Union, the INVU, Barrio San Jose and San Juan, all of them communities located in different parts of San Ramon city. For that matter, the results are framed by theorical principles of Community Psychology, Educational Psychology, Popular Education and Human Development.

Sexual Intimacy, Mental Illness, and Homelessness.

The current article reviews the literature on sexuality among individuals with a severe mental illness (SMI) who have experienced homelessness, a topic that has received little attention in the research literature, particularly from a community psychology perspective. The review begins with a synthesis of the literature on SMI and sexuality, followed by a review of the available literature on SMI, homelessness, and sexuality. It concludes with an interpretation of the findings using community psychology values and principles. The findings highlight the importance of intimate relationships to recovery for many individuals with an SMI who have experienced homelessness. Policy implications for homeless shelters and housing interventions are discussed.

How can clinical psychology work collaboratively with LGBT+ communities and their service stakeholders/commissioners?

This article describes a presentation that focused on how clinical psychologists can work collaboratively with stakeholders of, and clients from, gay and transgender (LGBT+) communities. Reflections discuss the influence of the authors’ identities, and the value of community psychology principles.

Learning Innovative Methodologies To Foster Personal, Organizational and Community Empowerment through Online and Face-to-Face Community Psychology Courses

This paper aims to illustrate the contextual factors that inspired some Italian community psychologists to develop three innovative intervention methodologies to foster personal, organizational and community empowerment. We also summarize several studies we conducted to explore the comparative efficacy of traditional and more innovative online teaching, in helping community psychology students master the competencies needed to carry out these three different intervention modalities. These studies showed that both face-to-face and online collaborative learning settings were effective not only in promoting students’ professional competencies, but also in enhancing their social capital and sociopolitical empowerment. Implications for a wider use of online settings to share community psychology values, principles and practices elaborated in different parts of the world are discussed.

A Feminist Approach to Teaching Community Psychology: The Senior Seminar Project

© 2016 by the board of trustees of the university of ill inois Since the establishment of the first women’s center at the University of Minnesota in 1960, women’s centers on college campuses have provided a wide variety of resources, including but not limited to support services (such as counseling, childcare, and sexual education), as well as workshops and networking opportunities that can benefit the individual both personally and academically (Byrne 48). Women’s centers, in particular, often meet needs that institutions are unable to address given a growing diverse student body, and they are frequently established by current students who are seeking a space for community (Kasper 185). Unfortunately, not all colleges and universities house women’s centers, despite the need for such spaces for their students. Having taught feminist courses, I saw the need for a women’s center at my current institution, the University of Washington Bothell (UWB). UWB is home to over four thousand students, with 51 percent identifying as female and 28 percent identifying as women of color, respectively (“Fast Facts”). As UWB has grown in size, so has our ethnic diversity, with over 51 percent of students in the 2013–14 academic year identifying as being a student of color (“Fast Facts”). Our institution prides itself on being a diverse and inclusive college campus, yet lacks the centers needed to foster a sense of community that promotes these values. Knowing this, I designed a senior seminar grounded in feminist pedagogy and community psychology principles to develop a space where students could learn to work as a collaborative group to facilitate social change on our campus. Over the course of one quarter, eighteen community psychology undergraduate students investigated the need for a women’s center on our campus through student surveys and faculty interviews. This paper is a collective illustration of their class project regarding establishing a campus women’s center as written by their faculty instructor and all eighteen students.

Programme for Adolescents in Foster Care : Adolescents' Participation

The program provides psycho-social support to foster adolescents during both their placement in foster families and in transitional period of leaving care, until they manage to cope with independent living. It is concieved as a direct answer to the needs of young people disturbed by the insecure patterns of attachment, who needed an opportunity to explore and modify negative experiences and acquire more successful models on how to build and maintain relationships, how to integrate the past, develop self-esteem and successfully enter the world of adults. It is based on the principles of community psychology, the concept of the group as the transitional object and group dynamics. It was created through interaction with the beneficiaries, with emphasis on their participation and linking with all relevant players on the local level. Applied methods: self-support groups, psychological workshops, supportive activities in socialization and social integration, trainings, educational courses, counselling service, ...

Principles from history, community psychology and developmental psychology applied to community based programs for deinstitutionalized youth

This article analyses the issues of the deinstitutionalization of youth, and the development of community based services, using some historical data and some of the principles of community psychology. The basic premise is that there is no such thing as a social vacuum. All programs are implemented and function in an elaborate social context.

Psychologie communautaire et psychologie de la santé : l’implication de la recherche psychosociale dans la promotion de la santé

This paper presents the issues and main principles of community psychology and community research as well as associated relationships and viewpoints in terms of health psychology and social psychology. In this perspective, the paper presents the context in which community psychology has emerged and its fundamental principles such as empowerment, community involvement and the ecological model. Using two examples of research in prevention of HIV infection, the paper leads to a greater comprehension of how a particular community-based approach to involve affected populations may be particularly relevant, not only to better understand their beliefs and behaviors but also to try to encourage them to change current behaviors or generate new ones. Research with adolescents involved in promoting condom use illustrates the use of psychosocial models of behavior change through a community approach. A second research focus on medical and psychosocial innovation through the use of non-routine, rapid screening tests for HIV - which are neither carried out nor supervised by medical personnel - aims to highlight the impact of the development of preventive action by directly concerned communities. The article aims to present the innovative methodological and epistemological issues which underpin community research.

Systems of Care: New Partnerships for Community Psychology

For almost two decades, the federal government has supported the development of integrated models of mental health service delivery for children and families, known as systems of care (SOCs), that strive to be child-centered, family-focused, community-based, and culturally competent. These efforts align well with the values and principles (e.g., empowerment, collaboration, strengths emphasis, focus on macro-level social/system change) central to community psychology (CP; Kloos et al. in Community psychology, Cengage Learning, Belmont, 2012). Despite the convergence of many core values, CPs have historically been underrepresented in key roles in SOC initiatives. However, this has changed in recent years, with increasing examples of community psychology skills and principles applied to the development, implementation, and evaluation of SOCs. Because successful and sustainable implementation of SOCs requires community and system-level change, and SOCs are increasingly being urged to adopt a stronger "public health" orientation (Miles et al. in A public health approach to children's mental health: a conceptual framework, Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development, National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health, Washington, DC, 2010), there is great potential for CPs to play important roles in SOCs. This paper discusses opportunities and roles for CPs in SOCs in applied research and evaluation, community practice, and training.

Creating a Sustainable “Healing Culture” Throughout a Healthcare System: Using Community Psychology Principles as a Guide

William D. Neigher, Ph.D. and Sharon Marie Hakim, M.A. (Atlantic Health System [NJ] and Wichita State University) This presentation describes foundational initiatives to create a sustainable “healing culture” within a large, multi-hospital healthcare system, the Atlantic Health System [AHS] in northern New Jersey. We will describe our guiding principles, implementation process, barriers and facilitators, progress to date, and next steps.

Mentors, Muses, and mutuality: honoring barbara snell dohrenwend

AbstractI describe feminist community psychology principles that have the potential to expand and enrich mentoring and that honor Barbara Snell Dohrenwend, a leader who contributed to the research, theory, and profession of community psychology. I reflect on the affect that Barbara Dohrenwend had on life and on the development of feminist community psychology. Examples of peer mentoring between Barbara Dohrenwend's research assistant, John L. Martin, and me are used to illustrate radiating effects of mentoring and interrelationships among forms of mentoring. Feminist community psychology principles discussed in relation to mentoring include mutuality, the power of contexts, and the importance of recognizing and affirming stigmatized and oppressed aspects of identities. The concepts of “muse” (Sullivan, 1996), “public homeplaces,” and “developmental leadership” (Belenky, Bond, & Weistein, 1997) are used to illustrate qualities of feminist community psychology mentoring. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Migration and Well-being: Beyond the Macrosystem

This commentary reviews the contributions of the 6 papers to the emerging focus on migration within community psychology. This collection of articles on migration and community represents a growing interest in the field in immigration issues in general, and a community psychology focus on these issues in particular. The papers span a range of issues raised by migration in a variety of different contexts. The papers reflect principles of community psychology by articulating a perspective on migration and its outcomes within national and global contexts. Taken together, these articles demonstrate the increasing mutual enrichment of immigration and community research. The articles suggest the need to continue to articulate psychological constructs as transactional and contextual across multiple levels of analysis.

An Ecological Process Model of Systems Change

In June 2007 the American Journal of Community Psychology published a special issue focused on theories, methods and interventions for systems change which included calls from the editors and authors for theoretical advancement in this field. We propose a conceptual model of systems change that integrates familiar and fundamental community psychology principles (succession, interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation) and accentuates a process orientation. To situate our framework we offer a definition of systems change and a brief review of the ecological perspective and principles. The Ecological Process Model of Systems Change is depicted, described and applied to a case example of policy driven systems level change in publicly funded social programs. We conclude by identifying salient implications for thinking and action which flow from the Model.

Promoting Positive Interactions in the Classroom: Adapting Parent-Child Interaction Therapy as a Universal Prevention Program

The adaptation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), an empirically- supported dyadic parent training intervention, to a preschool seing may provide an opportunity to enhance the well-being of both teachers and children by improving the teacher-child relationship and supplying teachers with effective tools for behavior management. The current article describes the development and implementation of a Teacher-Child Interaction Training (TCIT) program, based on the PCIT model, to a preschool seing serving primarily low-income, urban, ethnic minority youth. We discuss the rationale for applying PCIT as a prevention program, prior research on adaptations of PCIT to educational seings, application of community psychology principles and strategies in adapting PCIT to the classroom, core TCIT program components, evaluation of effectiveness, issues in sustainability, and resources for successfully implementing the program.

Increasing students' perceived sociopolitical empowerment through online and face‐to‐face community psychology seminars

AbstractCommunity psychology theorists underline the importance of promoting sociopolitical empowerment, but few studies have been conducted on the evaluation of the efficacy of empowering programs among university students. The authors report two studies: the first, with 216 psychology majors, compared the efficacy of face‐to‐face and online community psychology seminars in promoting perceived sociopolitical empowerment and self efficacy. The second, with 170 psychology majors, explored if differences in teachers experiences affected students sociopolitical empowerment. Results of ANOVA, on measures of empowerment and self‐efficacy, indicate that learning community psychology principles and a community analysis skill did increase sociopolitical empowerment and efficacies in all studies, both in online and face‐to‐face settings, regardless of teachers' experience. Implications for promoting active citizenship and attracting more students to community psychology programs are discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.