Community Psychology

Institute of Medicine (National Academy of Medicine)

-A report by the National Academy of Medicine (Mrazek & Haggerty, 1994) had great influence on our thinking about prevention. Its main conceptual contribution is the idea of universal, selective, or indicated measures or methods for prevention. While this framework is similar to Caplan's, it differs in that none of the populations described have yet experienced a disorder. Instead, the distinction is based upon the level of risk or distress the members of the population experience. -Universal preventive measures are interventions designed to be offered to everyone in a given population group, and they typically are administered to populations that are not in distress. This is similar to primary prevention. -Selective Preventive Measures. Selective preventive measures are interventions designed for people at above-average risk for developing behavioral or emotional disorders. That risk may be based on their environment (e.g., low income, family conflict) or personal factors (e.g., low self-esteem, difficulties in school). These risk characteristics are associated with the development of particular disorders but are not symptoms of the disorder itself. -Indicated Preventive Measures. Indicated preventive measures are interventions directed toward individual people who are considered at high risk for developing a disorder in the future, especially if they show early symptoms of the disorder. However, they do not meet criteria for full-fledged diagnosis of a mental disorder. -The National Academy of Medicine report (Mrazek & Haggerty, 1994) places mental health promotion (including concepts related to competence and wellness) into a separate area, distinct from prevention. The editors viewed self-esteem and mastery as the main focus of mental health promotion, with competence, self-efficacy, and individual empowerment all terms commonly used in describing such efforts. The National Academy of Medicine report defined its focus in terms of whether or not an approach prevents a specific disorder, not in terms of competence enhancement. -promotion - encouraging positive, healthy behaviors to replace maladaptive behaviors that could lead to problems.

Chapter 5 (additional)

-A third approach looks at how settings create predictable relationships among their members and how those qualities persist over time regardless of the individuals involved (E. Seidman & Capella, 2017). Settings can be understood in terms of these social regularities, defined as the routine patterns of social relations among the elements (e.g., persons) within a setting. A social regularities approach focuses not on individual personalities but on patterns of social relationships in communities that can affect distribution of resources, access to opportunities, and authority to address social issues. To discover social regularities, search for patterns of behavior that reveal roles and power relationships among setting members (e.g., teacher-student, therapist-client, employer-employee, parent-child). Roles are enacted in a specific setting in ways that affect power, decision making, resources, and inequalities. -Contributions of the Social Regularities Approach. The concept of social regularities calls attention to the role of relationships and power in settings. It also offers a way of understanding why it often seems that the more things change in a setting, the more they remain the same. If a setting changes the actors (e.g., new teachers or principal in a school) but not the fundamental social regularities of how it functions and who makes decisions, it will promote only first-order change. Often, attempts to change a setting, such as a school, are undermined by social regularities that are not changed, such as decision-making power and role relationships. It is only when those social regularities are altered that the system itself is changed, resulting in second-order change. -Environmental Psychology (environmental stressors, environmental design) -Neighborhood research (distal socioeconomic risk processes, risky physical environments, neighborhood disorder, protective processes)

Kelly

-Adapting concepts from the biological field of ecology, James G. Kelly proposed four key ecological principles in understanding human environments: interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession. These principles are about characteristics of settings, not of individuals. Workplaces differ in the extent of interdependence among workers, in what resources are exchanged, and in what processes are needed to adapt to the setting. Of course, these factors can influence people's lives greatly, as well as the functioning of schools, families, workplaces, and other settings. This framework guides where and how to observe within particular environments. -interdependence - mutual reliance and connectivity among systems; alterations to one portion of a system can impact relationships within that system or other systems. -Interdependence. Any social system has multiple related parts and multiple relationships with other systems. Changes in one of these parts can affect the others; they are interdependent. For a public school, interdependent components include students, teachers, administrators, secretaries, janitors and other staff, parents, board members, and district taxpayers. Actions or problems of any of these groups can affect everyone else. State and national governments and local and international economies also can affect local schooling. A corollary of the principle of interdependence is that any change in a system will have multiple consequences, some of them unanticipated and perhaps unwanted. Similarly, change efforts within a system may be thwarted because concerns of interdependent components of the system were not addressed. -cycling of resources - refers to the process of understanding a system by examining how resources are used, allocated, preserved, and transformed. -personal resources - an individual person's skills, expertise, experiences, strengths, or other attributes that can be used to address challenges. -social resources - collective beliefs, values, rules and other assets that come from having shared connections and relationships within a community. -physical resources - the tangible, material features of a location that individuals can utilize, such as specific types of rooms in a building and the objects they contain. -Cycling of resources specifies that any system can be understood by examining how resources are used, distributed, conserved, and transformed. Personal resources include individual talents, knowledge, experiences, strengths, or other qualities that can address challenges in a setting. Social resources occur in relationships among members of the setting, including shared beliefs, values, formal rules, informal norms, group events, and sense of community. Physical resources are the material or tangible characteristics of a setting: a library with rooms for group study, quiet nooks for individual study, and places to take a break. An implication of James G. Kelly's (1966) approach is to search any environment (e.g., family, organization, neighborhood) for resources (tangible or intangible) that can contribute to individual or system well-being. -adaptation - focuses on interactions between people and their environments and specifically, how an environment can restrict or form people's behavior, and, conversely, how environments can change because of their members. -Adaptation. The third ecological principle concerns the transactions between person and environment. Adaptation is a two-way process: Individuals cope with the constraints or demands of an environment, and environments adapt to their members. At a higher level of analysis, an organization that does not respond to the needs of its members will find it difficult to retain member involvement or attract new members. For individuals and social systems to survive, they need to adapt to each other. Social settings also adapt to the larger environments in which they are nested. A local school system, for instance, adapts yearly to changes in the requirements and funding of local, state, and national government, as well as changes in the student makeup of the schools. Changes in technology, the economy, and cultural ideas about education also affect local schools.A further implication of the adaptation principle is that every environment demands different skills. -succession - the understanding that settings and social systems are in an ongoing process of change. -Succession. Settings and social systems change over time, according to the principle of succession. Interdependence, resource cycling, and adaptation must be understood in that perspective. This principle applies to families, organizations, and communities. You can see succession in these relationship "settings" when there is a divorce, when new relationships start, or when children make decisions about their life commitments based on their parents' experiences. An implication of understanding succession in settings is that psychologists need to understand a system's history before they plan an intervention in that system. Psychologists also should carefully consider the likely consequences of the intervention, including possible unintended consequences.

Bower

-Bower said that we all start out life going through normative Key Integrated Social Systems (K.I.S.S.) (Day Care, Internet, Prenatal Care, Family, School, Religion, Parenting Ability) -When KISS doesnt work these systems can exacerbate inequalities. These systems also don't have to be amazing, just do their job. -A.I.D. (Ailing in Difficulty) -they are the exits, service centers on the great turnpike of life. Their job is to help and get you back in the mainstream. When AID doesn't work they send you to ICE and keep you in the system Juvenile health to detention back to juvenile health. -The school to prison pipeline - It's very hard to get back on the highway because they aren't going the speed limit and will get pulled over -I.C.E. - Illness Correctional Endeavour: ex Long Term Hospital, Mental Facility -Dick Tracy - with Bower's Theory, a good early KISS in life means you will be less likely to need AID and you won't have to be put on ice. The focus is to strengthen people not simply prevent.

Lazarus & Folkman (Coping)

-Conceptual model identifies key processes and outcomes, relationships among them, and choice points for constructive interventions. We present the model to stimulate your own thinking about the contexts of stress and coping processes involved in responding to life's challenges. Each shape in the model represents a different possibility for addressing stressors or promoting better coping. The arrows of the model suggest connections between different components. In applying our ecological model to stress and coping, we distinguish between risk factors that are correlated with problem outcomes and protective factors that are associated with avoiding problems or promoting well-being. We also use our ecological model to conceptualize how risk and protective factors can exist at multiple levels of analysis, from individual qualities to macrosystem forces. -Risk factors are characteristics of individuals and situations that are thought to increase the likelihood that a person will experience problematic outcomes, like personal distress, mental disorders, or behavior problems. An accumulation of risk factors can create situations that make people vulnerable for developing problematic outcomes. -Protective factors, in contrast, provide resources for coping and often represent strengths of persons, families, and communities. An ecological approach to coping looks for potential strengths at different levels of analysis that can buffer people from stressors rather than focusing only on potential risks. Protective factors may include personal qualities such as a parent's optimism or spirituality; interpersonal resources such as friends who offer to help; community resources such as support from religious congregations, school programs, or recreational opportunities; and macrosystem resources such as access to affordable health care, child care, or home nursing. -Within this ecological model, interventions may be designed (a) to reduce exposure to risk factors, (b) to enhance protective factors and experiences, or (c) to combine both strategies. -Distal factors are contributors to or buffers against a problem that may not be readily observable or obvious. In one way they are more distant from the expression of a problem; however, like roots on a plant, they can be very much connected to the development of a problem even though they are not readily visible. Distal factors are not direct triggers of a problem but are better thought of as (a) vulnerabilities that increase the likelihood of a problem developing or (b) buffers that decrease the likelihood. For example, an economic recession is a distal factor (macrolevel) that may reduce financial resources for employers (organizational level). In turn, these organizations lay off employees, directly affecting how their families cope (microlevel). With this increased stress, problematic individual outcomes such as increased substance abuse or developing depression may occur (individual level). While distal factors are more distant from an individual when explaining a problem, they are never conceptually far away from a potential impact on an individual, using the linkages across multiple ecological levels. Distal factors can also be personal, that is, located within the person but not readily observable. A common example is a having a genetic vulnerability to disease. As stated above, distal factors can involve risk or protection. This theory would also expect distal protective factors to be present in most people's lives. At a macrosystem level, cultures, for instance, can influence us in ways that may be risky (e.g., expectations for thinness that can lead to eating disorders) or protective (e.g., belief systems that might help us cope with loss of a loved one). On an individual level, a person may have personal traits that increase risk of stress (e.g., anxiousness) or strengths that promote hardiness to stressful circumstances. -Proximal factors can also confer risk or protection and are closer to the individual. That is, people are usually aware of their link to the development or avoidance of a problem. Within our ecological levels of analysis framework, proximal factors are most often classified as being at an individual, interpersonal, or small group level of analysis. Proximal factors are often thought of as directly contributing to a problem or providing a resource that can be directly used for coping. Examples include a recent conflict with someone or losing your job. Resources activated for coping are proximal if the person turns directly to these for help in coping, such as seeking social support from friends. -Distal contextual factors include ongoing conditions at a societal or community level of analysis that may interact in various life domains. Cultural traditions, beliefs, practices or rituals, and institutions can provide meaning and strength in difficult times. Yet they also can create stressors, for instance, in the ways that many cultures' views about gender roles foster unequal workloads and limit opportunities for women. Distal contextual risk factors tend to be chronic stressors that involve long-term processes that can affect access to resources and cause accumulation of disadvantage over years and decades General examples of distal contextual risk factors include poverty, racism, stigma, environmental pollution, noise, crowding, neighborhood crime, and lack of health care. Poverty, viewed as a prolonged and persistent situation of low resources to meet needs, is often understood among many developmental psychologists as the biggest risk factor for problematic outcomes. The effects of chronic environmental conditions may be cumulative, such as the combined effects of poverty, crowding, and a chronic illness. Ongoing family conditions, such as parental alcoholism or chronic illness, may be both chronic stressors for the affected family member and contextual factors for the children in such families that increase their risk of dysfunction. -Distal personal factors are aspects of an individual that are generally not readily observable. They may include genetic and other biological factors; personality traits such as shyness, optimism, or extraversion; learned cognitive patterns such as attributions about the source of problems; and continuing effects of prior life experiences such as child maltreatment. As with contextual factors, distal personal factors may act as stressors or resources and play a risk or protective role. Dispositional optimism, promotes a positive appraisal of stressors and effective coping -Proximal stressors, events or situations that represent a threatened or actual loss of resources. They are risk factors that vary in duration, severity, quantity, personal meaning, and impact. In addition, the boundary between proximal stressors and distal chronic stressors is not always simple. Six types of proximal stressors to illustrate our framework, recognizing that these categories overlap to some extent and other useful categories exist: major life events, life transitions, daily hassles, disasters, minority-related and acculturative stressors, vicious spirals. -Potential stressors are first presented as antecedents, before appraisal and coping. However, stressors and coping responses shape each other to some extent. -Major Life Events. Holmes and Rahe (1967) Social Readjustment Rating Scale is a standardized list of stressful life events such as grieving, divorce, and job loss. Each event is assigned, based on empirical studies, a point value to estimate the amount of change or adjustment it requires of the individual. The sum of these points has been used to represent an individual's degree of exposure to stress. Correlations of life-events scores and outcomes have been relatively modest, accounting for only 9%-10% of the variance (i.e., only 10% of negative outcomes are associated with major life events; Hobfoll & Vaux, 1993; Zautra & Bachrach, 2000). -Life Transitions. Within a stress and coping model, life transitions are expected to present challenges for coping. These transitions produce enduring changes in a person's life context, requiring the learning of new skills or assumption of new roles. Life transitions occur as part of regular human development (e.g., becoming an adolescent, an adult, or a senior) and as part of life circumstances (e.g., taking a job with new responsibilities, becoming a parent). Each transition requires its own combination of coping skills; each has its own cultural-social meaning (e.g., attitudes about divorce), and persons bring different personal and social resources to the transition. -Daily Hassles. A third strategy for documenting proximal stressors is to focus on challenges encountered in everyday experience, or daily hassles. In contrast to a major life events approach, the study of daily hassles and uplifts applies the life-events approach to short-term, smaller scale events. Examples of daily hassles include family arguments, traffic jams, and conflicts at work. Consistent with a community psychology approach that examines potential risks and protective processes, the approach of Kanner and colleagues also includes measurement of daily uplifts. Daily uplifts are the small, commonplace, mood-lifting things that can occur day to day, such as the kind gesture of a coworker or a phone call from a friend. Microaggressions are similar to daily hassles but are focused on the daily hassles resulting from discrimination toward minorities based on their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Responses to microaggressions might include efforts to change distal contextual influences through antiracist social action or efforts to change proximal factors through personal relationships and organizational practices. -Disasters. Disasters affect entire communities, regions, or nations. They include natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods, technological disasters such as an accident at a nuclear power plant, and mass violence such as terrorism and war. Reviewing 160 empirical studies involving 60,000 disaster victims, Norris and her colleagues found that the meaning of a disaster makes a difference: Mass violence had more damaging psychological consequences than natural or technological disasters. Those exposed to more severe situations, those who had more prior problems, and those with fewer resources reported greater problems. -Minority-Related and Acculturative Stressors. The experience of being a member of a group that is marginalized in society is a unique type of stressor that can affect one's health and well-being. These minority-related and acculturative stressors can be a frequent or even daily occurrence. Minority-related stressors can be distinguished by the ecological level at which they occur. Institutional minority-related stressors are systems, policies, and practices that result in the unfair treatment of a group. Racial profiling by law enforcement agencies is an example of this. Individual minority-related stressors are discriminatory behaviors enacted by individuals, including racial and gendered microaggressions as well as hate crimes. Cultural minority-related stressors occur when the cultural practices, values, ways of knowing, and contributions of one group are cast as superior to others. White nationalism and supremacy, which assume the superiority of European culture over others, are an example of this. Acculturative stressors are stressful events or circumstances related to navigating multiple cultures. For recent immigrants, such stressors may take the form of challenges such as learning a new language and the cultural mores and expectations of the host society. -Vicious Spirals. Vicious spirals are cascading patterns among multiple stressors that compound the effects of risk factors. These spirals are set in motion when the loss of one resource triggers other losses. Vicious spirals are particularly common for those with fewer material, social, or personal resources. In the example of our single mother, a vicious spiral might be interrupted by accessing one of several resources: an understanding employer, a community short-term loan fund, a relative who can provide child care, or a friend with car repair skills. An early intervention such as provision of child care might stop the spiral long enough for her to get back on her feet. -The next component of our ecological model of stress and coping includes the immediate reactions persons have when they encounter stressors. These reactions may range from mild irritation to serious health problems. The personal experience of stress includes physiological (e.g., racing heart, elevated cortisol, elevated blood pressure), emotional (e.g., anxiety, agitation, depression), behavioral (e.g., alcohol use, seeking help), cognitive (e.g., appraisal of threat and meaning of a stressor, excessive worry), and social (e.g., social withdrawal) components. These stress reactions are interdependent and often cyclical. The stress reaction will be more influenced by the proximal stressors and, in turn, will have a greater influence on outcomes. -Some stress is beneficial and even productive. For example, the Yerkes-Dodson law suggests that while too little or too much physiological arousal is associated with poor performance on a task, moderate arousal is associated with peak performance. Thus, experiencing some stress is more adaptive than experiencing no stress or too much stress. Some refer to the positive aspects of the stress reaction as eustress. States of eustress can include a sense of hope and meaning. -The next component of our ecological stress and coping model includes resources that can be used to buffer the effect of stressors or to support the development of personal strengths. To handle stressors, individuals often mobilize available resources for coping. Contextual and personal protective factors are resources, stressors are defined by their threats to resources, and interventions often provide resources. Simply having resources available does not lead to positive coping outcomes; a person needs to activate resources for coping. In this model, resources activated for coping are proximal resources. These resources include the following: material resources, social-emotional competencies, social settings, cultural resources, social support, mutual help groups, spiritual resources. -Material Resources. Material resources are tangible objects used to address personal needs and in daily life (e.g., money, car, shelter, food, clothing). In addition to meeting basic needs, material resources may provide opportunities for accomplishing goals. Material resources can create access to education (e.g., tuition, books, labs) that helps students develop skills to obtain jobs and buildcareers. -Social-Emotional Competencies. Social-emotional competencies are personal qualities that include self-regulation skills: managing emotions, motivations, cognitions, and other intrapersonal processes. Empathy involves accurate understanding of the emotions of others. Making personal connections, building relationships, and managing conflicts are crucial among both adults and children. -Social, Cultural, and Spiritual Resources. Social settings such as youth groups, mutual help organizations, and religious congregations can be coping resources. For persons who belong to a group that is marginalized, counterspaces can be another coping resource. Cultural resources include traditions, rituals, and beliefs that provide systems of meaning for interpreting stressors, examples of skillful coping, and guides to coping choices. -In our ecological stress and coping model, Panel F of model represents responses or strategies that a person uses to reduce stress, coping processes. -Cognitive Appraisal. During a stress reaction, cognitive appraisal is the ongoing process of constructing the meaning of a stressful situation or event. The most relevant aspects of appraisal include the extent to which the situation is seen as challenging or threatening, expected or unexpected, and largely controllable or not. Appraisal of stressors or resources may change over time. -Reappraisal. During coping processes, reappraising or "reframing" a problem involves altering one's perception of the situation or its meaning It may include changing one's view of the stressor's intensity, identifying unrecognized resources, or finding opportunities for growth or meaning in the situation. Cultural values and social support influence which reappraisals are perceived as realistic or constructive. -Categories of Coping. Empirically based studies have usually found three general categories of coping responses (Folkman & Moskowitz, 2004). Problem-focused coping involves addressing a problem situation directly, especially by making a plan to change the situation and following that plan. Changing how one studies for tests, making a plan to improve one's diet, or learning interviewing skills to search for a new job would be examples. Emotion-focused coping addresses the feelings that accompany the stressors. Typically, this approach seeks to reduce anxiety or increase emotional support from friends or family. Meaning-focused coping involves finding significance in the stressor by reappraising it, especially if this leads to growth or learning of important lessons. It may be based on deeper values, whether secular or spiritual, as when suffering is interpreted as leading to growth. -Virtuous Spirals. Adaptive coping may initiate a virtuous spiral in which resources are increased, successes build on each other, and the stressor is transformed into a catalyst for growth. In a virtuous spiral, access to coping resources and the ability to utilize the resources can have a multiplicative effect, reducing risk and promoting functioning. New opportunities for work, a career, and a fulfilling life appear as virtuous spirals of opportunity open doors to new resources. -Positive Emotions. The presence of positive emotions such as joy, contentment, pride, and love can also trigger upward spirals toward resilience and well-being. Unlike negative emotions, which constrain our ability to respond adaptively to stressful situations, positive emotions expand our "thought-action repertoires," stimulating novel and adaptive mindsets and ways of coping. Thus, positive emotions help build our intellectual, social, and psychological coping resources. -Posttraumatic Growth. For some people, virtuous spirals occur in the aftermath of traumatic experiences themselves and not necessarily because of the adaptive coping responses that follow them. That is, the experience of suffering and grappling with suffering sometimes leads to positive outcomes. Researchers refer to this as posttraumatic growth, the positive psychological change that results from struggling with highly challenging circumstances. Positive changes may include a greater appreciation for life and changed priorities, better and more satisfying relationship with others, a greater sense of personal strength, the perception of new possibilities and paths in life, and increased spiritualty. These outcomes suggest that posttraumatic growth is not a coping mechanism per se but "an experience of improvement that for some persons is deeply profound". -Traditionally, psychologists have studied coping outcomes by measuring reductions of maladaptive functioning. However, this perspective on coping is limited in two ways. First, it focuses on avoiding negative coping outcomes more than the possibility of promoting positive outcomes. Second, it tends to focus on individuals in isolation rather than also studying how individual functioning is related to broader ecological levels (families, organizations, communities, and societies). Panel G concerns positive coping outcomes and their relationship to broader ecological levels, while Panel H concerns distress, dysfunction, and disorders. -Wellness is not simply the absence of symptoms of disorder or of distress; it is the experience of positive outcomes in health and subjective well-being. Life and job satisfaction, positive affect, self-esteem, social connection, and academic achievement represent desired wellness outcomes that go beyond mere absence of symptoms. -Resilience is an individual's capacity to adapt successfully and function competently despite exposure to stress, adversity, or chronic trauma. Resilience appears to be a common coping process. Many people experience distress due to a stressor (e.g., death of a loved one) but recover their prior level of functioning without clinical intervention. Some are able to maintain stable levels of healthy functioning in the face of stressors, with little or no emotional distress or physical symptoms at all. Resilience arises from the interplay of environmental and individual factors. -Thriving. For some individuals, an encounter with adversity initiates a process of growth that takes them beyond their prior level of functioning. This positive outcome is referred to as thriving. It may be thought of as "resilience plus": in the face of stressors, not only holding one's ground but growing through the experience. Thriving in response to stressors often involves meaning-focused coping, access to coping resources, and the ability to mobilize scarce resources. -Empowerment. Wiley and Rappaport (2000) defined empowerment as gaining access to valued resources. It is important to recognize that empowerment involves actually gaining power in some way, not simply the feeling of being in control of one's life decisions (Zimmerman, 2000). -Distress, Dysfunction, Clinical Disorders. Panel H of Figure 9.4 includes problematic outcomes of coping. These outcomes range from symptoms of mental disorders to outcomes that are problematic but not considered clinical disorders. These include high levels of distress, irritability, or dysfunctional behaviors in family or work relationships such as neglect, hostility, or even violence. -Coping Is Dynamic and Contextual. Outcomes are not end states but simply one more step in the cyclical processes of coping. Outcomes can affect stressors and resources for future coping. Outcomes are best understood as snapshots in ongoing processes of living. Our coping processes and the stressors we encounter are dynamic, changing over time, and vary in the diverse contexts in which we live. -Interventions to promote coping. Community psychologists refer to actions taken to affect outcomes as interventions. Interventions can be targeted at each level of analysis and might be initiated by health, educational, or social service professionals; researchers; public leaders; or concerned citizens. Through the next five chapters, we discuss in detail different interventions implemented and/or supported by community psychologists. Timing concerns the point of intervention in the ecological model: Is the goal to influence distal factors, proximal stressors, stress reactions, resource activation, and/or coping strategies? Ecological level(s)concerns the intervention focus (e.g., individual, microsystem, organizational, locality, macrosystem). Content goals of the intervention might include increasing awareness (a goal of many psychotherapies and of consciousness-raisingin liberation movements), behavior change, skill building, social support, spiritual facilitation (as in twelve-stepgroups), advocacy for individuals or families, changing social policy, or other goals. -Social Policy and Advocacy. Improvements in the well-being of large numbers of persons involve changing laws, organizational practices, social programs, and funding decisions that affect resources for coping. These interventions can be understood as addressing stressors and distal factors in coping. Targets of advocacy may be government officials, private sector or community leaders, or media and the public. Advocacy may involve working to raise public awareness of an issue: for instance, gaining media attention for the needs of homeless families in your community. It may involve social action. -Organizational Consultation. Human services, schools, and work sites are less effective when organizational problems create too many stressors. Community and organizational psychologists consult with these settings, seeking to change organizational policies and practices. These may include altering employees' roles, decision-makingprocesses, or communication. Consultation may deal with issues such as work-family relationships, human diversity, and intergroup conflict. These interventions may lessen stress, increase social support, promote employee job satisfaction, or help make services more effective for clients. -Alternative Settings. At times, the shortcomings of an agency, clinic, or other setting may be so great that citizens or professionals decide to form an alternative setting to provide interventions. Charter schools and self-help organizations provide examples of citizens coming together to address distal factors and stressors that they felt were not being adequately addressed by conventional services. The Community Lodge and Oxford House are examples of alternative, supportive housing created by those concerned about the well-being of persons with mental illness or substance abuse problems. Alternative settings can provide citizens important choices of services and values systems. Some alternative settings can also function as counterspaces. -Community Coalitions. Community coalitions bring together representatives from a local community to address issues such as preventing drug abuse or promoting health or youth development. Often, coalitions are created by coordinating the work of groups who were already committed to addressing an issue but who had not been working together. -Prevention and Promotion Programs. Prevention and promotion programs are carefully designed interventions that seek to reduce the incidence of personal problems in living and illness or to promote health and personal development. Examples include school-based programs to promote social-emotionalcompetence, family-based programs to strengthen parenting or promote resilience, and community-wide efforts to promote exercise or prevent drug abuse. -Crisis Intervention. The most promising crisis-intervention approaches immediately after traumatic events focus on providing emotional support, practical assistance, and information about coping and on encouraging later use of one's own sources of support and treatment if needed. For mental health professionals, skills for responding to disasters include helping persons and families deal with multiple problems; working with community resources such as schools, workplaces, and religious congregations; and using mass media to provide information. Moreover, programs must be tailored to the specific culture, needs, and resources of a community. -Case Management. To increase the availability of coping resources within agencies, professional treatment is often complemented with innovations in case management and client advocacy. These interventions focus on both practical needs (e.g., housing) and psychological issues (e.g., decision making, social support). -Three important community-based resources for coping: social support, mutual help organizations, and spirituality and religious settings.

McMillian and Chavis

-David McMillan and David Chavis (1986) reviewed research in sociology and social psychology on sense of community and group cohesion. Their definition of sense of community: a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members' needs will be met through their commitment to be together. -McMillan and Chavis (1986) provided the first theory of sense of community by studying how people understood their own experiences of community. They identified four elements that formed the basis for a sense of community: membership, influence, integration and fulfillment of needs, and shared emotional connection. In their formulation, all four elements must be present to define a sense of community. No one element acts in isolation; all strengthen each other. -membership - one aspect of sense of community, it is the feeling of being an integral member of one's community. Membership is defined by five attributes: boundaries, common symbols, emotional safety, personal investment, and sense of belonging and identification. -boundaries - a set of standards for defining who is member of the community and who is excluded. These can include geographic boundaries in a locality-based community or shared characteristics or goals in a relational community. -common symbols - easily identifiable markers that denote membership, including visual elements, like colors and symbols, and audible elements, like slang, jargon, and anthems. -emotional safety - this can refer to a sense of security from crime and harm or to a deeper sense of having secure relationships within a community that are created through group acceptance and mutual processes for sharing emotions and concerns. -personal investment - the level of long-term commitment, effort, and participation one has in a community. Examples include buying a home, joining a club or organization, or volunteering within the community. -sense of belonging and identification - feeling accepted by other community members and having one's membership in their community being part of their personal identity. -Membership is the sense among community members of personal investment in the community and of belonging to it. It has five attributes. The first attribute, boundaries, refers to the necessity of defining what includes members and excludes nonmembers. For a locality, this involves geographic boundaries; for a relational community, it may involve personal similarities or shared goals. Boundaries may be clearly or obscurely marked, and they may be rigid or permeable. They are necessary for the community to define itself. Ingroup-outgroup distinctions are pervasive across cultures. Boundaries are partly defined through common symbols, identifying members or territory. In a community with clear boundaries, members may experience an increased sense of emotional safety. This can mean a sense of safety from crime in a neighborhood. More deeply, it can mean secure relationships for sharing feelings and concerns. Emotional safety in that sense requires mutual processes of self-disclosure and group acceptance. A member who feels safe is likely to make a personal investment in the community. McMillan (1996) referred to this as "paying dues," although it is often not monetary. Investment indicates long-term commitment to a community. It can also involve taking emotional risks for the group. These acts deepen a member's sense of belonging and identification with the community. The individual is accepted by other community members and defines personal identity partly in terms of membership in the community. -influence - an aspect of sense of community that refers to the amount of persuasion a specific individual or group dynamic can have on members of the community. It is a reciprocal relationship in which the individual can influence the community and the community in turn influences the individual. -The second element in a sense of community, influence, refers both to the power that members exercise over the group and to the reciprocal power that group dynamics exert on members. McMillan and Chavis (1986) based their discussion of influence in part on the group cohesiveness literature in social psychology. Members are more attracted to a group in which they feel influential. The most influential members in the group are often those to whom the needs and values of others matter most. Those who seek to dominate or exercise power too strongly often are isolated. The more cohesive the group, the greater is its pressure for conformity. However, this is rooted in the shared commitments of each individual to the group, not simply imposed on the individual. The individual influences the wider group or community, and that community influences the views and actions of the person. -integration - refers to how much relationships within a community contribute to an overall sense of community. It is defined by two elements: shared values and exchange of resources. -shared values - goals and ideals that are agreed upon by members and contribute to community involvement. -exchange of resources - also referred to as fulfillment of needs, refers to meeting community members' needs and sharing the means to achieve those ends. -Integration and Fulfillment of Needs. Integration refers to the extent to which relationships within a community contribute to a sense of community. Integration has two aspects: shared values and exchange of resources. Shared values are ideals that can be pursued through community involvement. The second aspect, exchange of resources (also called fulfillment of needs), refers to satisfying needs and exchanging resources among community members. McMillan (1996) referred to this as a "community economy." Individuals participate in communities in part because their individual needs are met there. Needs may be physical (e.g., for safety) or psychosocial (e.g., for emotional support, socializing, or exercising leadership). Integration is similar to interdependence and cycling of resources in Kelly's ecological perspective. -shared emotional connection - an aspect of sense of community, it is a common bond that unites community members that isn't easily defined but is understood by those who share it. This spiritual bond can be expressed through behavior, speech, or other elements and is developed through shared narrative of the community. -Shared Emotional Connection. Considered the "definitive element for true community" by McMillan and Chavis, a shared emotional connection involves a "spiritual bond": not necessarily religious-transcendent, and not easily defined, yet recognizable to those who share it. Members of a community may recognize a shared bond through behavior, speech, or other cues. The bond itself is deeper, however, not merely a matter of behavior. Shared emotional connection is strengthened through important community experiences, such as celebrations, shared rituals, honoring members, and shared stories. It is a shared narrative of the community and describes what it means to be a member. -The McMillan-Chavis model (or any other single framework for sense of community) might describe the basic elements in some communities, but other communities would require different conceptualizations.

Chapter 10 (additional)

-Developmental assets are factors within the child; the child's family; or the child's school, neighborhood, or community that promote healthy child and youth development (Scales et al., 2004). Internal assets include a strong commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and a positive identity. External assets include supportive relationships, opportunities for prosocial involvement, clear boundaries and expectations for behavior, and opportunities for constructive use of time. -Prevention Programs (effect size, best practices approach, cost-effectiveness analyses) -Principles of Effective Prevention/Promotion Programs: -Theory driven and evidence based - programs have a theoretical justification, address risk and protective factors identified in research, and have empirical support of efficacy. -Comprehensive - programs provide multiple interventions in multiple settings to address interrelated goals. -Appropriately timed - programs are provided before the onset of a disorder, at an appropriate developmental stage for the participants, or during important life transitions. -Socioculturally relevant - programs are culturally sensitive and incorporate cultural norms when appropriate. -Behavioral and skills based - programs include a strong behavioral component that focuses on the acquisition of specific skills and ensures opportunities for practicing those skills. -Sufficient dosage - programs are of a sufficient length and intensity to ensure the desired effects and have subsequent booster sessions to reinforce these effects when appropriate. -Positive relationships - programs specifically promote the development of positive relationships to provide mentoring and social support. -Second-order change - programs include a focus on changes in setting and communities, including changes in formal policies and specific practices and developing resources for positive development. -Support for staff - programs provide appropriate training for staff and ongoing support to ensure effective implementation and evaluation. -Program evaluation - programs have ongoing processes to ensure continual evaluation and improvement, assessment of outcomes, and assessment of community needs. -Successful Prevention and Promotion Programs: Prevention of HIV/AIDS Infection: Promoting Healthy Sexual Behaviors, Prevention of Childhood Behavior Disorders: Promoting Positive Parenting, Prevention of Bullying and School Violence: Promoting Safe School Climates

Chapter 6 (additional)

-Ecological-transactional model of community (ideas of ecological contexts and reciprocal relationships) -Types of communities: Locality based communities, relational communities -Concepts that relate to a sense of community: neighboring, citizen participation, social support, mediating structures, sense of community responsibility -social capital. This concept was first developed by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, Bourdieu's point was that children of the upper class in France were not just dependent upon their education to succeed; they also had access, through their parents, to an extended array of powerful social networks. So, for example, when they were looking for a job or starting a business, there was a wide group of people, some of whom they may have never met, who could be counted on to help them. A person may have significant social capital even if they do not personally own a large amount of economic capital (i.e., monetary wealth). James Coleman took Bourdieu's concept and extended it to include the idea that it was not just the members of the upper class who benefited from social capital. (bonding social capital, bridging social capital

Caplan

-Gerald Caplan is recognized as the individual whose use of the term "prevention" made it a part of the mental health lexicon. Caplan (1964) made a distinction between the following three types of prevention. -primary prevention - to reduce potentially harmful circumstances before they have a chance to create difficulty. An intervention given to entire populations when they are not in a condition of known need or distress. The goal is to lower the rate of new cases (from a public health perspective, to reduce the incidence) of disorders. -secondary prevention - actions that are taken as initial signs of a disorder or difficulty appear; also known as "early intervention." An intervention given to populations showing early signs of a disorder or difficulty, "at risk". -tertiary prevention - actions that are taken to decrease the intensity, length, and lasting effects of mental health or behavioral disorders; these programs usually encompass a group of people and are offered at the systems level. An intervention given to populations who have a mental health or behavioral disorder, with the intention of reducing its intensity and duration and limiting the long-term negative effects caused by the disorder.

Werner & Garmezy

-In 1955, one of the most remarkable longitudinal studies in the history of developmental psychology began on the island of Kauai. Emmy Werner and her colleagues followed 698 children, every child born on the island that year, for 40 years. The children were multiracial, and a full 30% experienced one or more risk factors in their lives, such as prenatal or birth complications, poverty, family violence, divorce, or parents with psychopathology or low education. One of the first important findings to arise from this study was that two thirds of the children who experienced four or more of these risk factors in the first 2 years of life developed learning disabilities, behavior disorders, delinquency, or mental health problems before adulthood. This finding, and others like it, helped lead to the cumulative-risk hypothesis. This hypothesis recognizes that almost all children can deal with one risk factor in their lives without it increasing their risk of negative outcomes. Most children can handle two risk factors. But when you get up to four risk factors, the chances of a negative outcome increase exponentially. It is not the presence of risk in a child's life that results in negative outcomes; it is the level of cumulative risk. -Much of Werner's work has focused on the 30% of the children exposed to four or more risk factors who did not develop behavior or learning problems. Werner termed these children who overcame multiple risk factors to become "competent, confident and caring adults" resilient, and the study of resiliency became the focus of her research. Resiliency refers to the ability of some individuals to overcome adverse conditions and experience healthy development. Werner and her colleagues identified factors that served to protect children exposed to multiple risk factors from negative outcomes. -What the researchers found, and what has been documented in other longitudinal studies of resiliency, is that for the majority of these troubled teens, the opening of opportunities in early adulthood led to significant improvement in functioning by middle age. These opportunities included education, vocational and educational opportunities provided through the military, geographic relocation, a good marriage (often a second marriage), and conversion to a religion that provided membership in a strong and active faith community. For some participants in the study, surviving a life-threatening experience served as an opportunity to evaluate their lives and make positive changes.

Rappaport

-Julian Rappaport (1981) proposed Rappaport's rule: "When everyone agrees with you, worry". Diversity of views is a valuable resource for understanding multiple sides of community and socialquestions. -Julian Rappaport made persuasive arguments that the field of community psychology needs to focus on its values to guide research and social action. Rappaport proposed valuing human diversity, collaboration, strengths rather than deficits, and social justice as unifying concepts that are needed to guide the field's value of empirical investigation of social problems. Rappaport extended these ideas to argue that an emphasis on a community's self-determination and empowerment was as vital to the field of community psychology as prevention. -divergent reasoning - an approach to social issues that avoids simplistic, one-sided answers and recognizes that conflicting viewpoints can coexist and lead to more effective solutions. It also involves questioning the status quo or commonly accepted viewpoints and welcoming new perspectives. -Recognizing important truths in opposing perspectives would force us to hold both in mind, thinking in terms of "both/and" rather than "either/or". Rappaport advocated that community psychologists use divergent reasoning as participant-conceptualizers in promoting dialogue about how our communities respond to social issues. First, recognize that conflicting viewpoints may usefully coexist; perhaps a problem may be better addressed by listening to different viewpoints and resisting easy answers that may privilege one viewpoint over others. The best thinking about social issues takes into account multiple perspectives and avoids one-sided answers. Dialogue that respects both positions, rather than a debate that creates winners and losers, can promote divergent reasoning. Divergent reasoning recognizes conflict between differing perspectives as a path to knowledge. It is not a search for complete objectivity but a process of learning through dialogue. Divergent reasoning also involves questioning the status quo or commonly accepted view of an issue. Questioning the status quo often involves listening carefully to the voices of persons who have direct experience with an issue, especially those whose views have been ignored. Finally, divergent reasoning requires humility. No matter how strong your commitment to your own point of view, it is likely to be one-sided in some way, and there is likely to be some truth in an opposing view. -narratives - shared stories, myths, and traditions that communicate important events, values, and other themes that are important for the community's identity and sustainability. -Rappaport (2000) defined narratives as being shared by members of a group. A community or setting narrative communicates events, values, and other themes important to the identity and sustainability of that group. Cultural myths and traditions are also narratives. Personal stories are individuals' unique accounts, created to make sense of their own lives. Personal identity is embedded in a life story. -Rappaport (1981) originally suggested that empowerment is aimed toward enhancing the possibilities for people to control their own lives. He defined empowerment as "a process, a mechanism by which people, organizations, and communities gain mastery over their affairs" -empowerment - an intentional, ongoing process centered in the local community, involving mutual respect, critical reflection, caring, and group participation, through which people lacking an equal share of resources gain greater access to and control over those resources. -Empowerment in these definitions is accomplished with others, not alone. It involves gaining and exercising greater power (access to resources), and not just the feeling of being in control of one's own life. At the individual level, it includes cognition ("critical reflection" in the Cornell definition above) and emotion ("caring"), as well as the behavior of participation in a group. So, even as individual empowerment is experienced internally as thoughts and feelings, it is also enacted socially and contextually, rather than in isolation. At the setting level, empowerment includes role relationships marked by mutual influence and reciprocal helping. At the community level, empowerment includes the social norm of broad participation, the presence of coalitions, shared leadership, and inclusive decision making about resources. -Empowerment is a multilevel concept: Individuals, organizations, communities, and societies can become more empowered. A person who becomes more aware and informed, more skeptical of traditional authority, more willing to oppose injustice, and more involved in citizen participation is becoming empowered. A work organization may empower small teams to assume responsibility for day-to-day decisions. Through networking with other groups, a community organization may influence the wider locality. Through advocacy at higher levels of government, a locality may gain a greater control over its affairs. Empowerment also can concern dismantling or resisting oppressive systems of injustice, at macrosystem or other levels. While empowerment may have radiating effects across levels, empowerment at one level does not necessarily lead to empowerment at other levels. -Empowerment is contextual: It differs across organizations, localities, communities, and cultures because of the differing histories, experiences, and environments of each. Empowerment leads us to ask key questions: Who is to be empowered, and for what purposes? -Empowerment often occurs through engagement in settings in which help-giving roles and relationships are marked by reciprocity and expertise is widely distributed. It often involves grassroots groups that are limited in size, possess a positive sense of community, involve members in decision making, and emphasize shared leadership and mutual influence. Empowerment also may involve linkages among organizations and collective action.

Moos

-Major framework for understanding environments emphasizes how people experience and understand settings. Rudolf Moos and colleagues argued that many psychological effects of environments are best assessed in terms of persons' perceptions of the environment and its meaning. Moos and colleagues developed a social climate approach to assess shared perceptions of a setting among its members and have created several scales to measure social climate in settings. Perceptions of social climates can affect social relationships and organizational functioning. Studying social climates of settings has been important for (a) understanding how individuals cope and (b) identifying which aspects of settings can help promote well-being. The social climate approach to understanding environments is based on three primary dimensions that can characterize any setting: how they organize social relationships, how they encourage personal development, and how they promote maintenance or change in the setting (Moos, 1994). -social climate approach - the method for evaluating perceptions of a social environment that are shared among its members; a key framework for understanding environments that stresses how people experience and comprehend settings. -social relationships - the connections that occur between people who interact in a social setting, including mutual social support, involvement, and coordination. -Social Relationships. The Social Relationships dimension of settings concerns mutual supportiveness, involvement, and cohesion of its members. The social climate approach looks for evidence of relationship qualities among members in each setting. These constructs are conceptually related to Kelly's principles of interdependence and cycling of resources. -personal development - the process of fostering an individual's autonomy, growth, and skills within a social setting. -Personal Development. The Personal Development dimension of settings concerns whether individual autonomy, growth, and skill development are fostered in the settings. Settings will vary on how much they focus efforts on the improvement of their members. These environmental demands are related to Kelly's principle of adaptation. -system maintenance and change = involves the preservation of order, relaying rules and expectations and monitoring behavior in a system, as well as the need for adaptation, innovation, and positive change. -System Maintenance and Change. The System Maintenance and Change dimension of settings concerns their emphasis on order, clarity of rules and expectations, and control of behavior. Some settings will spend a large amount of time and resources to maintain the rules and organization. Settings may vary on the basis of who has authority to make decisions and who may challenge those decisions. These are conceptually related to adaptation and succession in Kelly's framework. -Social climate scales are also useful in consultation and program development. Classroom Environment Scale. The social climate approach can be a useful tool in documenting differences in how the settings are experienced and in monitoring efforts to change them. The chief limitation of the social climate scale approach to understanding environments is that a score for a social climate cannot represent the depth of persons' experiences of the setting, even if it is helpful for comparing experiences. Perceptions of the setting are a combination of setting characteristics and personal perceptions and not simply a measure of the setting. Individuals or subgroups within the setting will likely see its social climate differently.

Ryan

-Psychologist William Ryan's 1971 book Blaming the Victim provided a classic critique of individualistic thinking about social problems. When we assume that problems such as poverty, drug abuse, educational failure, crime, or unemployment are caused by deficits within individuals, we ignore larger macrosystem factors such as economic conditions, discrimination, or lack of access to good-quality health care. We focus only on one level and ignore the potential factors at other levels of analysis. Even if we assume that personal deficits are caused by one's family, or by "cultural deprivation," we still locate the deficit within the person and ignore larger factors. Ryan (1971), coining a now-popular term, called this thinking blaming the victim. Ryan drew attention to how social conditions and problem definitions can create or worsen problems that are overly characterized as personal problems. He wanted us to examine how we often are trained to ignore those conditions. For Ryan, improving the quality of community life means addressing social and economic root causes. -Ryan (1971) also questioned whether researchers, policymakers, or others who have never directly experienced a social problem (e.g., poverty) have the best viewpoint for analyzing it. For someone who grew up with the blessings of family and community advantages, success in school and life may seem largely due to personal characteristics or effort (especially if one does not recognize how important those privileges are). For persons living in poverty and other oppressive conditions, however, success is heavily influenced by social and economic realities; too often their personal efforts are constrained by thosefactors. -Writing for a U.S.-based readership, Ryan (1981, 1994) argued that there are two different definitions of the cherished American value of equality. Fair play and fair share. -fair play - one definition of equality that seeks to ensure fairness in competition for social, educational, or economic advancement. It assumes that everyone starts in the same place and that different results are due to individual merit, talent, or effort. -fair shares - another definition of equality that focuses on lessening extreme outcome inequalities while also ensuring that fair procedures are set in place. It looks beyond individual factors and considers broader influences, such as access to resources or opportunities, to ensure equal competition for social, educational, and economic advancement. -The fair play definition of equality seeks to ensure rules of fairness in competition for economic, educational, or social advancement. The central metaphor is that of a competitive race, with everyone starting at the same place and rules of the contest treating all individuals similarly. If the rules are fair, then fair players assume that differences in results are caused by individual merit, talent, or effort. Those emphasizing a fair play vision of equality are more likely to accept great differences in the outcomes. Examples of fair play social policies include basing educational and employment decisions on test scores and enacting flat rates of taxation (all income groups are taxed the same percentage). -Ryan described an alternative perspective of fair shares, which is concerned not only with fairness of procedure but also with minimizing extreme inequalities of outcome. It is more concerned about equity. Using the example of a competitive race, a fair shares perspective would use fair play rules but would also go beyond them to consider other factors that can influence preparedness for the race. The central metaphor of the fair shares perspective is a community taking care of all its members. For instance, fair sharers would be concerned about access to affordable housing and quality education. A fair shares framework is used in analyzing income inequality and finding ways to increase resources for people so that everyone has a minimal level of economic security. A common way to do this in many Western democracies is to use tax codes to place more burden (i.e., a higher tax rate) on those that can afford it to pay for programs that address basic needs. Examples of fair share social policies include universal health care, enriching educational opportunities for all students (not just the gifted), and affirmative action in college admissions and employment. -Ryan emphasized that although both perspectives have value, fair play thinking dominates American discussions of equality and opportunity. Yet fair play presumes that all participants in the race for economic and social advancement begin at the same starting line and that we only need to make sure the race is conducted fairly. In fact, few citizens really believe that all persons share the same economic or educational resources, the same chances of employment in well-paying jobs, or the same starting line for advancement.

Barker

-Roger Barker and colleagues developed a comprehensive approach to understanding patterns of behavior in environments rather than focusing on individuals, ecological psychology. -behavior settings - a specific place with recurring patterns of conduct for specific times. The patterns of behavior are predictable because of demands of the setting and time. -Barker (1968) developed this concept as the primary unit of analysis for his theory of ecological psychology. A behavior setting is defined by having a place, time, and standing pattern of behavior. Some behavior settings are embedded within larger settings, such as classes within a school. Others stand alone, such as a gas station. Some occur only occasionally, such as a wedding or talent show, whereas others can be daily events. Barker and colleagues identified 884 behavior settings in the town of "Midwest" in 1963-1964; almost all could be grouped into five categories: government, business, educational, religious, and voluntary associations. -A behavior setting is not simply a physical place. Several behavior settings occurred within physical place. Behavior setting can have a time and specific standing behavior pattern. In Barker's perspective, the same patterns of behavior occur in a behavior setting irrespective of specific individuals in the setting; persons are largely interchangeable when predicting behavior that will happen there. For example, Barker (1968) suggested that it is the combination of the physical field, game time, and the standing patterns of behavior among players and fans that constitute the behavior setting of a baseball game. -optimally populated settings - environments where most people are actively involved and feel appreciated. -overpopulated settings - environments where too many people are available to fill roles and some people feel marginalized or excluded. - underpopulated settings - environments where there aren't enough people available to fill roles; if people are committed to maintaining the setting, then members may try to develop these skills personally or teach others these skills; in severely underpopulated settings, members may be too overstretched and the setting may ultimately be abandoned. -A second contribution of Barker's ecological approach has been the study of manning theory (now known as staffing theory), which refers to the number of members in a setting relative to the number of roles within a behavior setting. Barker and colleagues observed that some settings were very good at getting everyone involved in activities and having most people feel valued, called optimally populated settings. Other settings had more competition for roles and left some people out. -In a classic study—Big School, Small School—Barker and Gump (1964) compared involvement of students in extracurricular activities (one form of behavior settings) in large and small high schools in Kansas (enrollments ranged from 35 to over 2,000). In the smaller schools, they found greater rates of student involvement in performances and in leadership roles and higher levels of student satisfaction and attachment to school. However, in larger schools, there were only a slightly greater number of opportunities for involvement. Their research found that students in smaller schools were twice as likely to participate in active ways and, on average, participated in a wider variety of activities. Barker and Gump also found that students in smaller schools perceived more responsibility to volunteer for activities. Such students often reported a sense that even if they were not talented in a particular activity, their help was needed. The larger schools had higher rates of uninvolved students and students who felt "marginal" with little sense of commitment to the school or social connection with school peers or staff. The number of people in the settings and how they were organized had an impact on student motivation, achievement, and isolation. Barker theorized that vetoing circuits (behaviors that screen out potential members) would be common in larger schools because there are plenty of replacements available. A large school will need to have tryouts for athletic teams, musical groups, dramatic productions, and so on. Often, only the most talented will be able to participate. Barker and Gump (1964) found that larger schools contained more overpopulated settings. Members of an underpopulated behavior setting would engage in deviation-countering circuits rather than vetoing circuits. -One limitation is that Barker and associates focused on behavior, largely overlooking cultural meanings and other subjective processes. A second limitation is that behavior setting theory focuses on how behavior settings perpetuate themselves and mold the behavior of individuals. This is one side of the picture, but it underplays how settings are created and changed, and how individuals influence settings. Having originally been developed in a small-town setting, the theory has an emphasis on stability rather than change that is understandable yet limited in scope.

Sarason

-Seymour Sarason and colleagues at the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic began collaborating with schools and other institutions for youth in 1962. Working alongside school staff, the clinic staff sought to understand the culture of the school and to identify and foster contexts of productive learning to promote youth development. The clinic focused on understanding and changing settings, not just individuals, taking an ecological approach that foreshadowed important community psychology themes. These innovative programs involved collaboration with community members that helped initiate second-order change. They also evaluated their efforts with empirical research. Thus, they helped forge the community psychology values of wellness, community collaboration, and empirical grounding. Sarason described the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic as having three aims: to understand the "culture of the school" and how that often inhibits productive learning, to gain that understanding experientially through performing services in schools, and to model for university students the everyday practical involvement of their faculty in schools. -Seymour Sarason (1974) published another early critique of the field, The Psychological Sense of Community. He proposed that community psychology abandon its individualistic focus on mental health services and embrace a broader concern with the "psychological sense of community." He argued that community psychology should focus broadly on the relationships between individuals and their communities rather than just on the psychological adjustment of individuals. -Seymour Sarason defined a community as "a readily available, mutually supportive network of relationships on which one could depend". Sarason is essentially saying that a community is a setting defined by Gemeinschaft relationships. Gemeinschaft is often translated as "community." It refers to relationships that are multidimensional and are valued in their own right, not just as a means to an end. When you do something for someone or spend time with someone solely because you value that person and your relationship with them, that is a Gemeinschaft relationship. -Sarason argued that the "absence or dilution of the psychological sense of community is the most destructive dynamic in the lives of people in our society." Its development and maintenance is "the keystone value" for a community psychology. He applied the term "community" to localities, community institutions, families, street gangs, friends, neighbors, religious and fraternal bodies, and even national professional organizations. -Sarason (1974) defined the psychological sense of community as the perception of similarity to others, an acknowledged interdependence with others, a willingness to maintain this interdependence by giving to or doing for others what one expects from them, the feeling that one is part of a larger dependable and stable structure. In his original writings on sense of community, explicitly stated that sense of community is "the perception of similarity to others". It is also predicted by long-standing research in social networks showing that people tend to demonstrate homophily, the tendency to bond with people who are similar to them. -sense of the transcendent - a spiritual experience beyond oneself and one's immediate world. -hope - trusting the future will bring better circumstances and that things can and will change in a positive manner. It is essential for motivating community social change. -spirituality - the sense of connection one feels to something beyond themselves and their immediate world that is expressed through beliefs and practices. -spiritual communities - religious, spiritual, or faith-based institutions, organizations, or setting that can serve as mediating structures between their members and larger communities. -Sarason (1993) noted that sense of community throughout history has often been tied to a sense of the transcendent, of a spiritual experience beyond oneself and one's immediate world. He described transcendence as "the need to feel that what one is, was, or has done will have a significance outside the boundaries of one's personal place and time"

Chapter 9 (additional)

-Social support (generalized support, perceived support, specific support - families as context, natural helpers and mentors) -Social support networks (multidimensionality - multidimensional/unidimensional relationships, density - social network contains relationships that your network members have with each other, reciprocity -Mutual help groups (mutual assistance groups, helper therapy principle, experiential knowledge, community narratives ) -Mutual help groups have five distinctive features (Pistrang et al., 2008; Riessman, 1990): -a focal concern: a problem, life crisis, or issue common to all members; -peer relationships rather than, or in addition to, a professional-client relationship; -reciprocity of helping: each member both receives and provides help; -experiential knowledge used for coping; and -a community narrative that embodies the experiences and wisdom of its members. -Pargament's (1997) review documented five general findings about what spiritual-religious coping can add to psychology's understanding of coping: -Spiritual-religious coping may be particularly important for coping with stressful, largely uncontrollable situations among those who identify as religious or spiritual. -Spiritual-religious coping was empirically related to positive coping outcomes even after accounting for the influence of nonspiritual coping methods. -Spiritual-religious coping methods that were most related to positive outcomes included (a) perception of a spiritual relationship with a trustworthy and loving God, (b) activities such as prayer, (c) religious reappraisal promoting the sense that growth can come from stressful events, and (d) receiving support from fellow members of a religious congregation. -While there are many positive relationships between religion, spirituality, and coping, studies are beginning to show patterns of negative religious coping. Negative effects have included self-blame, a view of a harsh and severe deity, and lack of support from one's religious congregation. -Persons with low incomes, the elderly, ethnic minorities, women, and the widowed were more likely to find religion and spirituality useful for coping than other groups. What these groups seem to have in common is less access to secular sources of power and resources that can be used to address their problems.

CASEL

-Social-emotional learning (SEL) programs are school-based programs designed to foster social and emotional learning in children. SEL interventions are theoretically grounded on the concept of positive youth development (PYD) and are specifically identified as promotion programs, even though they have been effective in preventing some negative outcomes. -The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) was established to promote the adoption of SEL programs from preschool through high school. CASEL provides extensive resources to help in the adoption of SEL programs at the organization's website. -There were significant gains in SEL skills and attitudes at follow up across the programs. Participation in an SEL program was also significantly associated with increased prosocial behavior; better academic performance; and decreased conduct problems, emotional distress, and drug use. Some programs even demonstrated a positive effect on outcomes such as safe-sex behaviors and high school graduation. It is likely that more programs might have had these effects; they just were not measured. SEL programs have also been found to be cost-effective, with an average return of $11 for every $1 invested, according to one robust study of six SEL programs. -A study of SEL programs conducted by CASEL found that strong, clear leadership in the setting is key to successful implementation. Active administrative support for the program was critical for school commitment, for adoption and sustaining of the program by teachers and other staff, for obtaining money and other resources, and for explaining the program to parents and community members. -The CASEL evaluation of social and emotional learning programs found that sustained programs were integrated with other courses and into the mainstream of the school day and routine. This included use of the program in reading, health, and social studies, as well as in school assemblies, school discipline and resolution of conflicts among students, and expectations for playground and lunchroom behavior. Integration takes place over a period of years and includes the program becoming a regular part of the school budget; external funding is often available only for a few years or can change over time (Elias et al., 1997). The CASEL evaluation also found that sustained implementation required ongoing professional development about the program among teams of committed staff (teachers and others). This required some staff to become program advocates and role models. Sustainability is more likely when professional development is continual and implementers have a constantly deepening understanding of the theoretical principles and pedagogy upon which the program is based. When teams of implementers with a deep commitment to the program work together, they can often maintain program momentum even during times of turnover. Most important, deep understanding of program principles allows implementers to adapt programs in response to changing circumstances yet maintain key program elements.

O'Donnell

-While similar to behavior setting theory in focusing on specific settings, setting theory incorporates subjective experiences and cultural understandings to investigate the meaning of behavior in context. -activity settings - the integration of the physical setting and behavior of the people conducting an activity with their beliefs, participant roles, and the relationships they form and experience over time. -intersubjectivity - the process and outcome of sharing experiences, knowledge, understanding, and expectations with others; shared knowledge that is understood among community members but difficult to relay to strangers. -An activity setting is not simply a physical setting, and not just the behavior of persons who meet there, but also the subjective meanings that develop there among setting participants, especially intersubjectivities: beliefs, assumptions, values, and emotional experiences that are shared by setting participants. Key elements of an activity setting include the physical setting, positions (roles), people and the interpersonal relationships they form, time, and symbols that setting members create and use. Intersubjectivity develops over time as persons in the setting communicate, work together, and form relationships. They develop symbols, chiefly language but also visual or other images, to express what they have in common. This perspective calls attention to cultural practices used in the settings and to the meanings that members attach to them. Much of what is important about any culture is intersubjective, widely understood within the culture yet difficult to communicate to outsiders. Activity settings are often intentionally created to bring people together for a particular purpose, such as making meaning of life events, inspiring others, or navigating difficult circumstances. -counterspaces - alternative activity settings that are developed to provide safety and well-being to individuals who typically face oppression, isolation, and marginalization in existing settings. -narrative identity work - the effort of counterspace members to develop positive personal and group identities that work against the internalization of negative stereotypes. -acts of resistance - deliberately behaving in ways that protest oppression or that embrace suppressed cultural behaviors, such as wearing non-mainstream clothes. -direct relational transactions - social exchanges between members of a counterspace that create social support by offering guidance, opportunities for emotional release, and encouragement in the face of oppression. -Counterspaces can be thought of as a type of activity setting that promotes well-being for participants who experience oppression. Counterspaces take a variety of forms, from organizations to friend and peer networks. The concept emerged with critical race theorists as a way to understand how African American college students used their participation in specific campus settings to cope with racism. At least three social processes are believed to occur within counterspaces that lead to positive psychological outcomes. The first, narrative identity work, involves counterspace members fostering positive personal and group identities to counteract the internalization of negative dominant narratives (e.g., stereotypes). Another process, acts of resistance, refers to the intentional engagement in behaviors that protest oppressive conditions or that affirm subjugated but culturally congruent behaviors. Direct relational transactions that foster social support are interpersonal exchanges between members of a counterspace that provide instruction, venting and emotional release, and encouragement in the face of oppressive experiences.

Fairweather

-alternative settings - new and different initiatives created to address the unmet needs of those who are not helped by existing options. -Community settings to promote well-being rather than treat needs. The Community Lodge created alternative places to live and work for persons being discharged after long-term mental health hospitalizations. The existing approaches to address the challenges faced by persons leaving institutional care might have addressed "needs" of ex-patients, but Fairweather and colleagues were seeking a more transformative approach that could promote second-order change in roles and opportunities for participation in community life. Rather than creating new programs to address each need in a treatment plan, the leaders of the interventions decided that a more comprehensive approach was necessary to change the environments and to support the development and functioning of the people they wanted to help. -The Community Lodge (Fairweather, 1979, 1994; Fairweather et al., 1969) is a classic study and was an early influence on community psychology and community mental health yet some of its principle elements have never been widely adopted in mental health systems. -The Community Lodge idea began in a Veterans Administration psychiatric hospital in the 1950s. After working in psychiatric hospital care for some time, Fairweather and others recognized that the ecological context of the hospital did not promote independent community living for persons with serious mental illness. In hospital settings, the patient had few opportunities for decision making and autonomy. "Good behavior" usually meant following orders. In contrast, once discharged, an individual would need to take initiative, make independent decisions, and form supportive relationships with others. -Fairweather and colleagues developed inpatient group treatments that promoted the ability of men (veterans) with even the most serious mental disorders to participate in group decisions to prepare for living outside the hospital. However, even those treatments were not enough; those men, once released, still returned to the hospital at too high a rate after too short a period in the community. The problem, Fairweather and associates realized, was that there was no community setting, set of roles, or adequate support following release from the hospital. They recognized that altering the social regularities within the hospital was not enough.Fairweather and colleagues then created an alternative setting in which patients released from the hospital moved together to a residence in the community. An old motel was leased and refurbished for this new setting that they named the Lodge. After visiting the Lodge several times, the members were discharged from the hospital and moved in. After several trial-and-error experiences, Lodge members became self-governing. They developed Lodge rules that, for instance, made it acceptable to discuss symptoms of mental illness with other Lodge members but not with neighbors. The researchers were surprised that some of the previously most seriously impaired persons became active members of the community. With consultation of the staff, Lodge members established a janitorial and gardening business and eventually became economically self-supporting. -Although this innovation in mental health care has not changed community mental health systems broadly, it has been widely disseminated as an alternative setting. Currently, 16 states in the United States have Community Lodges (Coalition for Community Living, n.d.). The programs actively work together to promote the ideals first demonstrated by Fairweather and the first Lodge members to create alternative supports where the setting is part of the local neighborhood and supports the autonomy and development of the residents. -Community Lodges have several distinctive features, all involving changed role relationships that are usually found in mental health care. The most important and surprising one is that Lodge residents govern themselves. Professionals serve only as consultants and have a collaborative role that seeks to maximize members' autonomy. Lodge members assume responsibility for monitoring each other for taking medication, behaving responsibly within and outside the Lodge, and related issues. Each Lodge decides for itself whether to admit new members or to dismiss members. -In controlled studies using volunteers randomly assigned to a Lodge or to ordinary psychiatric aftercare, Fairweather (1979) and Fairweather et al. (1969) demonstrated that Lodge members, although similar to the control group on background variables, relapsed less often, spent fewer days in the hospital when they did, and spent more days employed than the controls. These differences persisted for 5 years of follow-up studies. Moreover, the Community Lodge method was less expensive than traditional community aftercare. Recent studies have documented that Lodge members had a 90% reduction in hospitalization rates over a year compared to their preadmission records (38 days compared to 5 days a year). Furthermore, their annual earned income rose 515% 5 years after completing occupational training compared to their pre-Lodge involvement, although it still represents a limited annual income of $6,708.

CP Concepts and Values

8 core values: -Social justice is the fair and equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, obligations, and power across communities within a society. All members in a socially just society have the same rights and are subject to the same processes, which are developed collaboratively with input from all members of that society. -Respect for human diversity acknowledges and honors the variety of communities and social identities based on gender, ethnic or racial identity, nationality, sexual orientation, ability or disability, socioeconomic status, age, religious and spiritual beliefs, and other characteristics. Communities are understood on their own terms, and research, interventions, and other psychological work are tailored based on those terms. -Sense of community is a feeling of belongingness, interdependence, and mutual commitment that links individuals as a collective. It is integral to community and social action and is a resource for social support and clinical work. -Collective wellness is an overall sense of contentment within a community that balances the objective and subjective needs of all individuals and groups within that community and resolves conflicting needs for the general good. -Empowerment and citizen participation are essential components to all work in community psychology, ensuring that community involvement exists at all ecological levels in making decisions and that community members can exert control. -Collaboration entails an equal relationship between community psychologists and community members. Psychologists lend their expertise but do not assume a position of hierarchical superiority, giving citizens the opportunity to contribute their own knowledge, resources, and strengths. -Empirical grounding is using empirical research to make community action more effective and using the lessons from that work to make research more valid for understanding communities. Community psychologists also acknowledge that no research is unbiased, so they are open about values and the impact of context in their work. -Multilevel, strengths-based perspective avoids focusing only on the individual level and addresses all ecological levels of analysis, recognizing and integrating community strengths at these levels in the work of community psychology.

Albee (prevention equations)

Prevention - taking steps to ensure a negative event does not occur, rather than having to deal with the negative impact of that event. -In 1959, George Albee looked at the number of people in the United States who could benefit from mental health counseling in a given year. Then he looked at the number of mental health clinicians the country could produce. His analysis showed that there could never be a sufficient number of clinicians trained to provide all the needed mental health services for the population. -Members of poor and minority groups were more likely to receive severe diagnoses, to receive medication rather than psychotherapy, and to be seen in groups rather than individually. The preferred clients were those most like the therapists—male, Caucasian, verbally articulate, and successful. -In 1982, George Albee developed a formula to illustrate that the presence of risk factors alone did not definitively lead to behavioral and emotional disorders. Rather, it was the cumulative effect of those risk factors and the presence of protective factors that predicted whether disorder would arise. The protective factors had a direct impact on the effect of the risk factors. The formula was also meant to be used as a framework for potential points of prevention interventions. Albee's equation only included two categories of risk factors (physical vulnerability and stress) and three categories of protective factors (coping skills, social support, and self-esteem). Maurice Elias (1987) extended Albee's formula to explicitly include risk and protective factors in organizations, communities, and societies. He did this by including two new risk factors (risk factors in the environment and stressors in the environment) and three new protective factors (positive socialization practices, social support resources, and opportunities for connectedness). -Study of manpower

Bronfenbrenner

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1979) proposed a levels of analysis framework (describing levels of social contexts) that is influential in developmental psychology and community psychology. The most proximal systems, closest to the individual and involving the most face-to-face contact, are closer to the center of the diagram. The more distal systems, less immediate to the person yet having broad effects, are toward the outside of the diagram. -Individuals - The concept of the individual in this model encompasses all of a person's experiences, relationships, thoughts, and feelings. Consider the individual person, nested within the other levels. The person chooses their relationships or environments to some extent and influences them in many ways; likewise, these influence the person. Each person is involved in systems at multiple ecological levels (e.g., family and friends, workplace, neighborhood). Much research in community psychology concerns how individuals are interrelated with social contexts in their lives. Community psychologists and others in related fields have developed individually oriented preventive interventions to increase personal capacities to address problems in communities. These interventions have been documented to be effective in reducing such problems as difficulties in the social and academic development of children, adolescent behavior problems and juvenile delinquency, adult physical health and depression, HIV/AIDS, difficulties during family transitions such as parenting and divorce, and family violence. -Microsystems - Microsystems are environments in which a person repeatedly engages in direct, personal interaction with others (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 22). They include families, classrooms, friendship networks, athletic teams, musical groups, neighborhoods, residence hall wings, and self-help groups. In microsystems, individuals form interpersonal relationships, assume social roles, and share activities. Members have roles, differential power in making decisions, reactions to the actions of other members, and so on. Microsystems can be important sources of support for their members but also sources of conflict and burdens. In this psychological usage of the term, setting is not simply a physical place but an enduring set of relationships among individuals that may be associated with one or several places. Physical settings such as playgrounds, local parks, bars, or coffee shops may provide meeting places for microsystems. The term "setting" is applied to microsystems and to larger organizations. Organizations - Organizations are larger than microsystems and have a formal structure: a title, a mission, bylaws or policies, meeting or work times, supervisory relationships, and so on. Organizations studied by community psychologists include human service and health care settings, treatment programs, schools, workplaces, neighborhood associations, cooperative housing units, religious congregations, and community coalitions. These important forms of community affect whom people associate with, what resources are available to them, and how they define and identify themselves. Organizations often consist of sets of smaller microsystems. Classes, activities, departments, staff, administrators, and boards make up a school or college. Large community organizations usually work through committees. However, organizations are not simply the sum of their parts; the dynamics of the whole organization, such as its organizational hierarchy and its informal culture, are important. In turn, organizations can be parts of larger social units. Localities - Although the term "community" has meanings at many levels of analysis, one prominent meaning refers to geographic localities, including rural counties, small towns, urban neighborhoods, or entire cities. Localities usually have governments; local economies; media; systems of social, educational, and health services; and other institutions that influence individual quality of life. Localities may be understood as sets of organizations or microsystems. Individuals participate in the life of their shared locality mainly through smaller groups. An association of neighborhood residents is an organization, while the entire neighborhood is a locality. Its history, cultural traditions, and qualities as a whole community surround each of those levels. -Macrosystems - Macrosystems are the largest level of analysis in our system. Macrosystems include societies, cultures, political parties, social movements, corporations, international labor unions, multiple levels of government, international institutions, broad economic and social forces, and belief systems. Macrosystems exercise influence through policies and specific decisions, such as legislation and court decisions, and through promoting ideologies and social norms. Ideals of individual autonomy greatly influence U.S. culture and the discipline of psychology. Macrosystems also form contexts within which the other levels function, such as how the economic climate affects businesses. But systems at other levels can influence macrosystems through social advocacy or through actions such as buying locally grown foods. An important level of analysis that we include under macrosystems is the population. A population is defined by a broadly shared characteristic (e.g., gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, income, religion, sexual orientation, ability or disability status). Populations can be the basis of a broad form of community (e.g., the Jewish community, the gay community). However, not all individuals within a population will identify with it as a community.