Critical Comparison of Community Psychology and Public Health

Critical Comparison of Community Psychology and Public Health

Community Psychology is a relatively young discipline. It was validated as a discipline in 1965, at the Swampscott Conference in Boston, as a growing group of psychologists became dissatisfied with clinical psychology’s inability to address broader social issues. Community Psychology grew out of the need to understand how individuals relate to society at large – it is not only concerned with mental health, but also with social behaviour. Greater focus is put on the community and social change in order to address mental health and well-being.

In contrast to the dominant intrapsychic model of psychology, community psychology focuses on the impact of social systems on the human psyche. Community psychology attempts to address the needs of the majority of society, unlike mainstream psychodynamic therapy, which focuses on the individual. Community Psychology’s goal is to reduce the number of incidences down the road, whereas psychotherapy is concerned with reducing the prevalence of mental health issues. Community psychology employs various approaches to address issues of communities, relationship within them, and people’s related attitudes and behaviour – focus is put on socially relevant problems like substance abuse, crime and violence. Community psychology has a larger impact on society as it aims to develop, implement and evaluate action-oriented community based programmes.

The Public Health approach developed out of need for an alternative to the Bio-Medical Model used in clinical medicine, which focuses on identifying the pathogen/illness, treatment and recovery. The Bio-Medical Model was found inadequate, as the focus was on treating the individual, and not on reducing the number of incidences of a certain health problem/issue. Public Health is an approach that is concerned with the health of the community as a whole. Ergo, Public Health is ultimately community health. It has been said that...