My aim in this paper is to analyse community psychology and public health and distinguish between the two approaches. Community Psychology focuses on economic, environmental, political and social factors that influence the way in which people all over the world live their lives. It also touches on social factors that contribute or causes problems in various societies. Public Health on the other hand, according to Tutorial Letter 102/0/2014, is defined as being concerned with “preventing disease and distress” in the community as a whole, not just the individual, before they occur. It promotes healthy living and with the prevention of illness linked with lifestyle.
To compare these two concepts, one should first have a basic understanding of the origins and historical development of community psychology and public health.
Community Psychology are very much linked with the mental health reform movements in the USA. The three most important reform movements were; ‘Moral Treatment’, ‘The Mental Hygiene’ and ‘Deinstitutionalisation’. Each of these movements have led to the establishment of particular types of institution: In the Moral Treatment era, we got therapeutic mental hospitals, the Mental Hygiene era gave us Child Guidance Clinics and the establishment of Community Health Centers came in the Deinstitutionalisation era (Tutorial Letter 102/0/2014).
Public health, like community psychology, focuses on prevention of disease. It is defined as “the science and practice of
It is crucial to understand what makes a community healthy, as public health is concerned with health promotion of population rather than an individual focus (Department of Health (DOH) 2012). Wanless (2004) defines public health as a “science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting through the organised effort and informed of the society, organisations, communities and individuals”. It focuses on an entire population addressing the health needs of the population, working in a partnership with an individual, communities, health worker, health agencies and
Public Health is the monitoring of the health of a population as a whole. This ranges from accidents such as car crashes to gun shot wounds
Also, Public Health concerned on entire populations’ health, there no specify that force on, but these populations can be as small as a local neighborhood, or as huge as an entries country or region of the world. Which means basically that Public health protects and promotes health care to people in community by work with other partners around the worlds like Monitor health, detect and investigate health problems, research conduct to enhance preventions, develop and advocate public health policies, implement prevention strategies, and promote healthy behaviors. For example, some public heath concept are Community partnerships, develop policies, and link people to needed services. How they work is? Community partnerships will provide facilitate and emergency preparedness for their people. Develop policies create some laws and regulations how to run the public heath department run and how they can develop it further beyond the world. Link people to needed services like community health centers, clinics, and effective care for socially disadvantaged people. All in all, in public heath concept works together, try to safe and help people in community from
Community development is used to promote health education because the problems can be directly targeted and hit. Community development is used to target issues such as environment issues, housing, crime, pollution, support and isolation. By improving these issues you can improve the health issues that have become a consequence, Such as smoking, alcohol, drugs, stress, exercise and crime. See diagram
Public health is the measures taken by the government to prevent ill health and disease. The government monitor health so that they can develop different programmes and legislation to improve the health and well being of the people in the country. They do this by attempting to solve inequalities, so that all people not matter what are able to live a healthy life. There are eight policies to improve today's public health, these are; planning for health
Public health has the interests of the public at its core. According to the Department of Health (DoH) (2012) Public health is concerned with prevention and therefore encourages people to ‘stay healthy’ and ‘avoid getting ill’.
The community-based mental health programs are not only inadequate in relation to numbers, but also underfunded (Unite for Sight.org, 2013). According to Martin (1995), we live in a society that is increasingly becoming conscious of an excessive tax burden. Tax burden, on the other hand, provides for the realization of just how deinstitutionalization is directly related to politics and public policy. The pubic in America who account for the electorate, have a significant say in how policy is affected. To this extent the assumption in relation to deinstitutionalization is that due to increased public outcry in regards to taxation, the both federal and state governments have over the years been forced to cut down spending on some items in the recurring budget in order to free up additional funds. According to Treatment Advocacy Center (2011), the federal government in 1965 surgically excluded the payment of Medicaid for patients institutionalized in state psychiatric and other mental disorders institutions. The goals of this action, according to Treatment Advocacy Center (2011) was to foster deinstitutionalization, and the wading of care costs to sates, viewing them as largely responsible for mental care.
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals" (1920, C.E.A. Winslow). This therefore infers public health is the preventing and controlling of disease within communities, to prolong life and promote health through organised society. The keys aspects of public health …
The conditions of psychiatric hospitals were poorly maintained yet again. From the late 1800s until the mid-1900s, the conditions of these institutions were hit or miss. Despite the rising population of those in need of mental health treatment, conditions were deteriorating across the board. This pushed in the deinstitutionalization movement (Nevid, Rathus, & Green, 2014). This was a push to remove patients from state-run hospitals into a more community-based treatment center. In most cases today, there are treatment plans in place depending upon the severity of the disorder an individual may be suffering from. It’s more about treating an individual with any variety of modern techniques or therapies and trying to reintegrate them into society rather than a lifelong stay in an institution. Deinstitutionalization didn’t work the way it was intended. After it was put into place there was a rise in the homeless population and different programs that were supposed to be put into place didn’t live up to
In an effort to transform the public mental health system, in 1963, President Kennedy proposed the Community Mental Health Act. It was the first among several federal initiatives to create a community mental health care system. Once the act was ratified, there was an intense deterioration in institutionalization, otherwise known as “deinstitutionalization”, and by 1980 there was a 75% declined of the inpatient population at many public psychiatric hospitals. In 2000, there was less than 10% of the public institutionalized just fifty years earlier. In 2009, there was even a more dramatic shift among children and adolescence whereby there was a 98% decline in
Public health as it is implicated in the lives of the community – it is important to conceptualise what this might mean. Moreover, public health has seen as a multidiscipline perspective in which it can be defined on many levels, and I find that it could be elusive to understand its meaning. By simple understanding of public health, I refer to an approach derived by Winslow (1920) and Baggott (2000).
Public health means so many things, in the past it was called “health for the poor”, “washing your hands”, and taking care of “vulnerable populations” (Riegelman & Kirkwood, 2015 p. 4). In essence those are good definitions, but it is more than that definitions, public health is considered a
Community health is the process or characteristics that allow a community’s population and economy to survive. Community health is defined as the meeting of collective needs through identification of problems and
Public health is a dynamic field of medicine that is concerned primarily with improving the health of populations rather than just the health of individuals. Winslow (1920) defined public health as;
Public health is a huge umbrella term that represent population and within that population is a community. Its primary focus is on population and prevention of diseases and creating healthy communities nationally. It incorporates social, physical, and cultural environments to assist people and their communities (Public Health and Medicine, 2016).