How much of you is because of U?

• How much is because of where U

were born ?

• Would you recommend your

context ?
 Change contexts – change life
experiences
• U
• Pregnancy out of marriage
• Homosexuality
• Career decision
• Under – privileged
• Surrogacy
COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
 What is a community?
• Locality
– Based on proximity, not necessarily choice.

• Relational Community
– Collective structures in which the members
possess a sense of community with each other,
but it is not necessarily based on location.
What is a sense of community & is it declining?

• Definition
– "the perception of similarity to others, and 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.“

• Components (McMillan & Chavis):

– Membership.
– Influence.
– Integration.
– Emotional connection.
 People and Their Environment
• The fundamental principle in Community
Psychology is captured in Kurt Lewin’s (1951)
equation: B=f (P,E)
• B: stands for behaviour
• F: function of
• P: stands for personality
• E: environment
• Behaviour is a function of the personality of an
individual as well as the environment.
• Community psychology takes the ecological view
Cross – cultural trends in disorders
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_the
re_be_cross_cultural_differences_in_the_
manifestation_of_personality_disorders

• Personality disorders
• Eating disorders
• ODD & CD
• Gender differences in depression
• Mood disorders
• Suicide
 How will you as PSYCHOLOGIST
address the following
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Addiction
• Aggression
 How will you as PSYCHOLOGIST
address the following
• Suicide attempt due to poor exam result
• Victims of Blue whale challenge
• Victim of trolling on social media
• Substance abuse in adolescence
• Student experiencing homesickness
• Sexual orientation
• Road rage
 Emergence of CP
• (a) the evolution of contextualism as a philosophy
of science (changing context of mental health and
illness; man-power shortage; movement from
treatment to prevention)
• (b) the movement toward methodological
pluralism, (limitations of psychotherapy / role
limitations of psychologists in mental health as
medical field)
• (c) the evolving paradigms of human diversity
and multiculturalism.
 core values of CP
• Core values of community psychology include:
• Seeking social justice for all individuals in a
community.
• Empowering marginalized individuals and
communities.
• Embracing and promoting diversity in
communities.
• Understanding that individual behavior it not just
the result of their own thinking.

• Understanding of human behavior in the context

of social groups and communities.

• Improving the quality of life of individual in a

group which may include an organization or an
institution or another social setting.

• Instead of treating the individual as the problem

for exhibiting certain behavior, focusing on the
individual in the context of social environment to
make their life better.
 WHAT IS COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY?

• Community Psychology lies at the intersection of Social Psychology,

Political Science, and Community development. It is the study of how to use the
principles of psychology to create communities of all sizes that promote mental
health of their members.

• The basic tenets of Community Psychology are:

• Any non-biological mental illness can either be caused by or aggravated by a

mismatch between a person's personality and the community environment in
which he or she exists.
• It is often cheaper and more effective to change the environment than to treat
multiple patients within it.
• Primary interventions (those aimed at preventing problems before they start)
are much more effective than secondary or tertiary interventions (those that
treat patients or incipient patients).
 WHAT IS COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY?
• Orford (1992) gives a simple definition: “community
psychology is about understanding people within their
social worlds and using this understanding to improve
people's well-being."

• Marc B. Goldstein ….not from disturbances within their

individual psyches, but from the failures of community
systems to adequately socialize and support its citizens.
 WHAT IS COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY?
• Community psychology is the branch of psychology concerned with
person-environment interactions and the ways society impacts upon
individual and community functioning. Community psychology
focuses on social issues, social institutions, and other settings that
influence individuals, groups, and organizations.

• It is an applied discipline where researchers examine various social

issues including poverty, substance abuse, school failure, community
development, risk and protective factors, empowerment, diversity,
prevention, intervention, delinquency, high risk behaviours,
aggression, violence, and many other topics.
 Defining features of Community
Psychology

• The four defining features are:

1. Focus on prevention
2. Reframing of questions
3. Style of service delivery
4. Level of analysis and intervention
Principles of Community Psychology
• An ecological approach
An ecological approach recognises the importance of the historical, environmental and
situational context of people's lives.

This context might be linked to the roles that other people play, the actual physical
environment, the legislation and policies framing a particular issue or the
discourses and representations of people or problems in society at large.

Understanding the impact of context will often lead to strategies for intervention that
extend beyond working with individual people.

An ecological approach also enables community psychologists to anticipate the

impact of change more widely.
• Systems Perspectives
By taking an ecological approach, community psychologists are adopting a systems
perspective in
their work.

Knowledge about how the social system operates, helps community psychologists
understand the multiple causes of social problems, at different levels, from global to
individual
levels.

This inevitably means community psychologists are interested in the perspectives of

different stakeholders, and in analysing and using power in all its manifestations at
different
points in the social system.
• Diversity and power
Community psychologist positively encourage diversity and seek to enable people to become
empowered through inclusive individual, group and collective action.

In their work, community psychologists explore the nature of oppression, in partnership with people marginalised
by the social system.

Thus they may draw attention to ways in which people are excluded from full social
life or are treated unfairly by professionals and others.

They try to ensure that their work includes people irrespective of class, race, ethnicity, culture, age and disability.
Their ways of working encourage others, too, to welcome diversity.
• Prevention and social action
Community psychologists will often work with individuals and groups, not just on
individual interventions for immediate problems, but rather in ways that divert
resources towards prevention at any or all of the different levels of the social
system.

So, they may be working with individuals developing self-help strategies, or in terms of
changing some aspect of the immediate environment that contributes to the
problem.

Alternatively, they may work at policy levels, be these local or national.

Throughout their work, they endeavour to work in ways that are more likely to
promote well-being, lead to the empowerment of groups or individuals, and wider
scale social change, as well as to prevent problems occurring.

The types of work they may do include helping people develop information campaigns,
supporting self-help organisations or training for professionals so that institutional
practices change.
Working with the explicit value base outlined above, community psychologists may
also support individuals or groups and lend both their expertise and their time to
working alongside marginalised people in direct social action
• Interdisciplinary work
Community psychologists recognise the artificial boundaries between
different professional and academic disciplines.
Thus they bring to their work a commitment to understand problems in
different ways and to work with others for better understanding and
better use of resources at a local level.

They will sometimes get involved in ways of helping those from different
backgrounds come to a shared understanding of a problem and work
together for effective solutions.

Wherever possible they will look for strategies of working that maximise
the joint resources different professionals or interest groups can bring
to a problem
• Collaboration, partnership and alliances
Relationships with community groups and organisations are viewed as partnerships,
where each partner makes important contributions.
• Community psychologists listen to local people about their concerns and
viewpoints, and together negotiate a way of working towards shared goals. The
work that community psychologists do is not neutral.

• They work with those members of communities who share a commitment to

greater social justice and the values of justice, stewardship and community. They
work with others to help develop just such a commitment.

• Where possible, community psychologists will involve their community partners

in the work itself, which may require support and training, as well as resources to
support their participation.

• Whatever the personal benefits community psychologists might gain from a

piece of work, they would usually consider the work only worth doing if people
who are marginalized are likely to gain as a result.
• Collaboration, partnership and alliances
• This perspective extends to reporting the information gained from practice.
Knowledge does not reside with the community psychology practitioner or
researcher.
• It is seen as jointly produced and owned by the workers and local people, and
efforts are made to arrive at joint decisions about publication and reporting of
the work.
 Evaluation
• Evaluation is seen as an essential element of social change and social
innovation. It can identify positive and negative aspects of change and
contribute important information for both project improvement and for the
most efficient use of resources.

• Community psychologists possess skills in both statistical and non-statistical

research, and are able to undertake evaluations themselves if required.

• Most importantly though, they are able to support local people in carrying
out creative evaluations that are robust and provide projects (and funders
or commissioners) with important information for the future and
celebration of achievements to date.

• Sometimes additional training and support for local people in carrying out
evaluations will be required, and this is a key component of community
psychological work.

• Evaluation is frequently linked to funding applications, and community

psychologists are able to help local people access and obtain relevant
funding.
 Emphasis on Prevention

• Cowen (1980) believes that the cornerstone of

Community Psychology is the emphasis on
prevention.
• Prevention is described as one of many underlying
values of community psychology
• Caplan (1964) divided prevention into:
1. Primary
2. Secondary
3. Tertiary
 Primary prevention
• Primary prevention seeks to prevent the onset of a
disorder.
• Primary prevention seeks to keep healthy people
healthy and involves steps taken to prevent the
occurrence of a mental illness or other forms of
psychosocial dysfunction.
• Forgays suggested 3 types of primary prevention:
• Primary prevention I
• Primary prevention II
• Primary prevention III
 Primary prevention I
• Intervention programmes are provided to groups
without necessarily identifying them as at risk of
developing a particular problem.
• The programme however is seen as relevant to that
segment of the population.
• Genetic counselling and testing for young couples
considering having children is an e.g of primary
prevention I
 Primary prevention II
• These are directed to individual considered to be at
“mild risk”.
• These risk are assessed based on demographic
characteristics such as age, socio-economic class
and educational level rather than individual
characteristics.
• For example there are problems related to sex that
are likely to be faced by teenagers than adults or
younger children so a programme can be drafted
specifically for teenagers so as to teach them issues
to deal with sex.
 Primary prevention III
• Some groups are identified as at great risk of
developing serious mental disorders based on
factors unique to those groups.
• For example children who have been sexually
abused are seen as great risk of developing
psychological disorders.
 Secondary Prevention
• Secondary prevention also known as early
intervention, is directed at detecting early signs of
psychological dysfunction or difficulty. By effective
treatment at an early stage in the development of
the condition , secondary prevention strategies
attempt to nip the problem in the bud, reduce
severity and duration of the illness.
• Examples of secondary prevention would be;
• Programmes to help widows overcome stress and
manage the loss of a loved one.
• Programmes to help children with bedwetting
problem.
 Tertiary Prevention
• The focus of tertiary prevention is to alleviate the
harmful consequences of long term illness.

• Individuals already suffering from chronic disorders

are targeted with the intention of limiting the
disability caused by the disorder, reducing its
intensity and duration thereby prevention
recurrence or additional complications.

• E.g. Rehabilitation
 Emergence
• The efforts by a few psychologists to have an
independent subfield of community
psychology have shown fruition only in the
past decade
• but have remained largely overshadowed by
work done in community development by
departments of social work in universities.
• community psychology (CP) can be defined as
understanding the needs of a people and the
resources available to meet those needs
• focus on formulating interventions that
provide opportunities for optimum growth of
its people, because a lack of
• resources (individual, organizational, and
community level) can have negative impacts
on their mental health
• Eg. social conditions of poverty, alienation,
isolation, and, in general, a lack of social
resources
• terms community psychology and community
mental health have been used synonymously
• up to the 1970s and early 1980s remained
confined to the personality characteristics of
the individual rather than the context in
understanding processes involving social
change.
• However, there has been a change in the past
two decades in the assumptions used by
Indian psychologists to explain factors that
determine behavior.
• That is, a contextual study of behavior is
expected to better explain the issue of Indian
philosophical thought and traditions that
contribute to well-being
• the efforts of the national government toward
improvement of the status of people have
been supplemented by community
development projects by non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and social workers
affiliated with political parties and from
academia.
• mental health professionals in disaster
management to help communities cope with
psychosocial problems
• The Community Psychology Association of
India (CPAI) was founded in 1987 at Lucknow
University with the aim of serving the
communities. The Indian Journal of
Community Psychology, started in 2004, is an
official journal of CPAI.
• challenges for creating uniform policies to
benefit the majority of people utilizing
services. Unless the methodology to
understand concepts and application of tools
is contextualized, psychology in India will
largely remain ‘textbookish.
• Misra (1990) points out that the rural and
urban constitute two largely independent
subsystems that require separate tools for
data collection and separate parameters for
analysis and understanding in their own right.
• One cannot understand the rural by applying
the parameters and principles derived from
urban samples.
• This imported approach,however,has ignored
the social realities by yielding research that is
based on the use of verbal techniques,
Western personality inventories and scales
without bothering to find out whether the
items are even comprehended or if the
concepts are present in the minds of the
respondents (Sinha, 1986)
• research in India is gradually orienting towards
assessment in a subcultural context.
• people are likely to find the actual network of
relations between members of a community
as stressful. Their effort, therefore, should be
directed towards maneuvering with the
required psychological skill and insight of the
situation for substituting a network of
healthier interpersonal relations that are
rewarding and satisfying in place of the older
network.
• And in doing this,they should largely make use
of the resources available within the
community.
Eg. Old age communities, peer groups for young
adults, child care for young mothers
• community participation was documented by
Moni Nag (2002), wherein a STD/HIV
Intervention Program in a red-light area of
Kolkatta – using few sex workers as peer
educators.
• a qualitative narrative in a book titled Reaching India’s Poor: Non
Governmental approaches to Community Health. Dr. Coyaji
• The book also documents a program in Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern
India, where a rural development program is run on the strategy of self-
reliance rather than economic well-being.
• important themes tackled in this volume are health care financing,
maternal and child health, community participation, indigenous health
systems, and the role of community health workers.
• Dubey and Tyagi’s (1996) article on the involvement of the community in
rural development in the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation
(SAARC) argues that the role of the community could be more
complimentary by the creation of awareness, selection of schemes, and
also in the process of decision making and feedback.
• the major disaster of importance and a reference point is the
Bhopal gas tragedy. Mental health professionals, psychiatrists,
clinical psychologists and social workers have contributed to
the current high awareness of the psychological aspects of
disasters for the affected population.
• The mobilization of mental health professionals from
different parts of the country to the disaster-affected
populations is generally not a desirable approach to mental
health care for the reason that in a country as diverse as India,
the affected population may speak a different language, have
different cultural beliefs and practices, and the visiting teams
may not be sensitive to these aspects.
• gender discrimination, a project with women in a rural
community used participatory research
• provided a wide variety of programs organized for women
such as female adult education, sanction of old age and
widows pension, establishment of a reading room and
recreation center equipped with books, installation of hand-
pumps for drinking water, and arrangement of institutional
credit.
• few months of implementation, showed significant
improvements in women’s health, better awareness of legal
rights, and increased level of social awareness.
• The focus of research is not only on those with mental illness
but also on the problems of physical challenges, poverty,
population increase and discrimination.
• The paradigm for conducting research is now based on action-
research and community participation, because it is
recognized that the Indian village community has different
norms, obligations, and institutions, and, thus, the problems
are of a different kind from those living in affluent urban
settings
• Problems like poverty, health, superstition, economic
exploitation, discrimination, and now increasing violence and
sectarianism
• community psychologists, who have sought to
establish an independent identity in the past
decade, need to have a multidisciplinary
approach and be able to work hand in hand
with sociologists, social workers, legal,
educational, and clinical psychologists, which,
so far, has not been commonly seen.
• The model in action
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopl
eandpower/2015/10/shadows-
151029073123574.html

• Who was the care provider

• In spite of the effect of the program what was
the remark of Dr. Patel
• Clinically diagnosed – what is the response
• Why Institutional care is not care.
 Crisis - Intervention
• What is crisis? Demand on an individual
• Where/when crisis?
1.Developmental
2.Socio-cultural
3.Accidental

• Not always negative also positive

• How a crisis
1.Current adaptive functions not
enough/disrupted
2.Overwhelming in nature
3.Coping mechanisms could be adaptive or not.
 Features
• Temporarily self- limiting
• Individual most vulnerable and open
• Individual’s feeling and cognitive states are not
conducive for problem solving
• Not resolved returns
• Incremental cumulated stressors and more
intense responses
• or decremental responses – increased apathy and
decreased crisis responses - normalized.
Features of Intervention program

1.Proximal help
2.Immediate service
3.Mobility
4.Flexibility and versatility of professional roles
 Techniques
• Several models
• Immediacy
• Different from psychotherapy/conventional
psychology interventions.
• CP more active directive role
• Includes more members than the client
• Shorter span more effective methods
• E.g. Post Disaster management steps
2) Anticipatory crisis intervention

• Goal – emotional/stress inoculation

• Normative life events
• E.g. – Pre-marital counselling, sex education
for adolescents, career counselling for young
adults, pre-natal courses for new parents etc.
 consultation
• Direct / indirect service
• Reach out is multi-fold
• Reach to multitude skill
• Mental health program development /
planning / research / preventative
 Consultation

Types Characteristics Functions Phases

Teaching and
Client - centered Voluntary (paid) training Entry
consultees

Consultee – Works as an Communication Defining the

centered outsider facilitator problem

Program – Human –
Analyzing
centered Time -bound relations
alternate actions
administrative mediator

Consultee – Catalyze
Dealing with
centered Problem - focused /inspire/facilitate
barriers
admininstrative ideas

Termination
 YOU are the CONSULTANT

The municipal office of the city has invited you

to come on board to manage the ROAD RAGE
problem
 Mental Health Education
• To educate public about mental illness + its
treatment + destigmatization
• Encourage preventive activities +
• Not as straight forward as physical health
• Perception of mentally ill : less sickness more
lack of will power or not mentally strong etc.
 Public perception
• Can you give an example of mental illness? – only
taps extremes not a continuum
• Shirley star technique – 75 % affirmed the
extreme case but for the rest 3- 36%
acknowledgement.
• Cummings study – community responds with
denial and isolation.
• Nunnally studies – social media depiction of
mental illness – not associated with achievement
 Techniques
• Consultation
• Mass media
• Organized lectures
 Content
• Needs of the target group
• Goals of educator
• A mental health educator – subject expertise
and system expertise
• Inform + influence attitude
• Potential groups – vulnerable to emotional
disorders + policy makers / decision makers +
care-givers …?? Any other
 Effectiveness
• Change in information level – easier
• Change in practice level – rarely achieved
• Simply bcoz – content is not straight forward – then – more
don’ts then dos’ + misconceived attribution
• Now – metanalysis + longitudinal studies – present broad
guidelines on some themes – Child rearing to high incidence
mental illness like depression; more common place like
• Issue –specific anger management technique to managing
panic attacks to examination anxiety etc.
• improving interpersonal relationships
 If you were to design a mental health
program
• Target group
• Content
• Delivery technique
• Check effectiveness?
Aggression
 Sigmund Freud’s
theory of aggression as an
instinctual drive
• Aggression is defined as an intrapsychological
phenomenon
• different human behavior and emotions such
as sarcastic language, passive–aggressive
responses, and murder are understood to be
expressions of one unifying concept.
• process oriented and intuitive nature.
• all manifestations of human behavior from
one basic life instinct, designated as Eros
• functioned to enhance, prolong, and
reproduce life
• a dual-instinct theory in which the life instinct
was matched by a death instinct, termed
Thanatos
• conceived of as a force urging the
disintegration of the individual and human life
at large
• The relationship between the life and death instinct
is polarized and any destructive or nondestructive
activity can be construed as the specific interaction
of the antagonistic forces
• feelings of anger and hostility result in conflict and
unconscious guilt like sexual wishes do, and initiate
defensive activity
• many impulses contain both sexual and aggressive
components,
• clinical manifestations, including sadism, masochism,
and ambivalence, are varying degrees of conflict
between eros and thanatos
• Thanatos forces the individual to direct aggressive
acts against the social and physical environment
rather than self-destruct.
• Displacement and sublimation convert - attack on
self into outward redirection.
• Leading to: coping, creativity, selfdestruction, and
aggression toward inanimate objects and living
beings
• if the aggressive impulses are not adequately
“bound” or fused with love, leads to then
increased aggression and destructiveness.
• Trauma like - Deprivation, object loss, or child
abuse interfere with the normative fusion of
love and aggression
• Failure of fusion leads to accumulation
destructive energy and result in destructive
behavior.
• Catharsis refers to a process in which the
affective, nondestructive display of hostile and
aggressive inclinations

• Leads to discharge of destructive energy and

thereby reduce the strength of these
inclinations
Limitations / Criticisms
• “The basic concepts of Freud’s theories are
metaphorical and do not yield testable
hypotheses.” (Tedeschi & Felson, 1994, p. 39)
(1) single explanatory factor, the death instinct
explains a complex phenomenon? (e.g., Okey,
1992).
(2) Freud’s stance that aggression is of a primary
(instinctual) nature vs. strong empirical
evidence of its reactive (secondary) character
(Pedder, 1992).
(3) Lack of empirical documentation of the
biological origins of aggression as a drive
(Brenner, 1971).
• Aggression is thus inevitable, and attempts to
control and eliminate it can only be temporary
(e.g., Bandura, 1973). (5) Finally, Freud’s
reasoning on catharsis has been questioned:
• Is the reduction of tension a matter of
seconds, minutes, days, or months?
• Does it happen quickly or very slowly?
• And, how is it possible to treat catharsis as an
unquestionable mechanism in spite of strong
negative research evidence on this point?
• Aggression is defined as the “sequence of
behavior, the goal-response to which is the
injury of the person toward whom it is
directed” (Dollard et al., 1939, p. 9).
• frustration + build-up of aggressive energy /
drive (innate).
• energizes - aggressive responses.
• a process-oriented and intuitive definition,
• Dollard – Miller : frustration–aggression
hypothesis.
• to translate the Freudian instinct to more
objective behavioral terms that can be
empirically tested
• original hypothesis: any interference with an
individual’s goal-directed activities =
frustration
• more distinct + open to empirical testing than
Freud’s original approach
• “The occurrence of aggressive behavior always
presupposes the existence of frustration and,
contrariwise, that the existence of frustration always
leads to some form of aggression” (Dollard et al.,
1939, p. 11).
• aggressive behavior emanates from an aggressive
drive,
• this drive is not instinctive nature.
• The drive is only initiated due to perceptions of
frustrating external stimuli.
• aggression is as a reactive phenomenon.
• The blocking of an ongoing goal response leads to a build-up
of aggressive energy (hydraulic model) within the organism.
• This energy is noxious and must be released by the organism
in the form of aggressive behavior.
• Any response that releases this aggressive energy is an
instance of aggression.
• The strength of the instigation to aggression (e.g., the
aggressive drive) varies according to three factors:
• 1. The amount of frustration.
• 2. The degree of interference with a goal-seeking response.
• 3. The number of frustrated responses experienced by the
individual.
• Aggressive responses are self-reinforcing
• Therefore strengthened by reinforcement associated with
drive reduction.
• Repeating the same behavior requires a new build-up of drive
for activation.
• Hierarchy of aggressive responses
• Dominant aggressive responses may be weakened through
punishment.
• learned inhibition lowers the dominant response in the
hierarchy of aggressive responses.
• not propose that frustration always leads
immediately or directly to aggression.
• Learned inhibitions may dam up the drive
until some later frustrating event occurs.
• the potential for an aggressive drive is
claimed to be inborn,
• + frustrating stimuli must also be present to
initiate its development.
• Both biological and social factors appear
equally important in the development of
aggressive behavior
• Limitations:
• The assumption that an organism is programmed so
that frustration always creates an instigation to
aggress,
• remains until it is discharged by aggressive behavior
• has been contradicted by two lines of evidence.
• Firstly, no empirical support and
• biologists have found that an organism is simply not
capable of storing energy or of cumulating energy
over time.
• Bandura criticized the drive (and instinct) theory
because the internal determinants were inferred
from the behavior they caused.
• pseudoexplanations on this process of circularity and
clarified his position by stating that:
• “It should be emphasized here that it is not the
existence of motivated behavior that is being
questioned, but rather whether such behavior is at
all explained by ascribing it to the action of drives or
other inner forces.” (Bandura, 1973, p. 40)
• Like attributing adverse events to luck and destiny
• Social learning theory
• Aggression stems from large and varied range of conditions.
• Bandura (1973), a comprehensive analysis of aggressive behavior requires
careful attention to three issues
• (1) the ways such actions are acquired (“Origins of aggression”),
• (2) the factors that instigate their occurrence (“Instigators of aggression”),
and
• (3) the conditions that maintain their performance (“Regulators of
aggression”).
• same analyses that would be required for any other kind of behavior.
• in social learning theory a self system is not a psychic agent that controls
aggressive behavior.
• Rather, it refers to cognitive structures that provide the referential
standards against which aggressive and other behavior is judged.
• Self not controlled by unexplainable or uncontrollable forces but by self
constructed explainable strategies.
• A wide variety of reinforcers appear to play a role
(“Origins of aggression”)
(1) acquisition of material incentives,
(2) social approval or increased status,
(3) the alleviation of aversion treatment, and
(4) pain and suffering on the part of the victim.
Although people sometimes learn aggressive behavior
by trial and error,
most complex skills are learned vicariously by observing
others.
• According to Bandura, aggression is defined as:
“Behavior that results in personal injury and physical destruction. The injury
may be physical, or it may involve psychological impairment through
disparagement and abusive exercise of coercive power.” (Bandura, 1983, p.
2).

• The emphasis on the attribution of personal responsibility and injurious

intent to the harm-doer places this definition within the trigger-
mechanism group.

• role of various types of reinforcement and punishment as regulators of

aggression confirms that this is also a consequence-oriented definition
• learning by observation involves four interrelated processes.
1. First, one must notice or pay attention to the cues, behavior, and
outcomes of the modeled event.
2. Second the observations must be encoded into some form of memory
representation.
3. Third, these cognitive processes are transformed into new imitative
response patterns.
4. Fourth given the appropriate incentives, the modeled behavior will be
performed.
• The characteristics of the model are important in this process:
“People are most frequently rewarded for following the
behavior of models who are intelligent, who possess certain
social and technical competencies, command social power,
and who, by their adroitness, occupy high positions in various
status hierarchies.” (Bandura, 1986, p. 128).

• the three principal sources of aggressive modeling:

1. Family
2. Subculture
3. Mass media
• two broad classes of motivators of behavior.
1) Biologically based motivators include
a) internal aversive stimulation arising from tissue deficits,
b) and external sources of aversive stimulation that activate
behavior through their painful effects.

2) Cognitive representation of future outcomes aiding individuals

to generate current motivators of aggression, form the other
main group of motivators. (“If I don’t do this what will I get”.)

• Both classes of motivators are closely linked up to modeling of

aggressive behavior
• Four processes by which modeling can instigate aggressive behavior (“Instigators of
aggression”):
1. A directive function of modeling serves to inform the observer about the causal means-ends
relations in the situation. observers can generalize a causal understanding that, under the
same conditions, they will receive the same outcome as the model if they imitate him/her.
2. a disinhibitory function of a model teaches observers that they can get away with aggressive
behavior without being punished for it.
3. Observations of others who engage in aggressive behavior cause emotional arousal in the
observers. This may increase the likelihood of imitative aggression and even heighten the
intensity of aggressive responses.
4. Finally, observations of a model may have stimulus-enhancing effects by directing the
observers’ attention to the aggressive expressions and methods being used. In addition to
this,
• Bandura claims that instructions also serve as instigators of aggressive behavior,
• and that aggression can be triggered by bizarre internal beliefs such as delusions
• a number of different factors operate to ensure that
it will be maintained (“Regulators of aggression”).
(1) Successful aggression against others often continues
to provide aggressors with tangible and social
rewards.
(2) It also has the potential of alleviating aversive or
abusive treatment from others.
(3) Self-reinforcement by self-administering praise and
approval for the completion of aggressive behavior is
yet another regulator of aggression
• Firstly, they question the evidence for the role of self-
regulation as applied to aggressive behavior. Their main point
is that the development of self-regulatory processes do not
place all aggressive behavior under self-control
• Secondly, they claim that social learning theory ignores the
social context within which behavior is learned or performed.
More specifically, this relates to limitations set by the
laboratory design that has dominated social learning theory
studies on aggression.
• in spite of the name, the focus of social learning theory is on
the individual, and the theory tends to underestimate the
reciprocal behavior of people engaged in social interactions
 Prevention of Aggression
• Punishment :
• works on the principles of operant
conditioning which posit that the
• strength of association between the stimulus
and the response will be weakened if the
consequence of the response is aversive in
nature.
• the consequence of an aggressive behaviour is
made painful or aversive for the aggressor,
then it is quite likely that his or her aggressive
behaviour will be decreased.
• research outcomes on the effectiveness of
punishment
• Given immediately after the aggressive
behaviour –
• There should a certainty about punishment
given after each aggressive behavour –
• Punishment should be strong –
• Punishment should also be justified in the
eyes of the aggressor
• Catharsis:
• mixed results
• is the process of expressing one’s aggressive
intent in some relatively non-harmful manner.
• The hypothesis that has been tested by the
social psychologists is that catharsis reduces
the possibility of aggressive behaviour in its
harmful form.
• Research has shown that non-harmful
behaviours (such as going for vigourous
sports, aggressing at the photograph of an
enemy or shouting in foul language in an
empty room) that are a substitute to the
actual aggressive behaviour have proved to
reduce anger.
• However, such effects have been found to be
only temporary and when the person is placed
in the actual social setting, the aggressive
behaviour may return.
• Furthermore, contrary to the belief that safer
aggressive acts such as watching televised
violence, attacking an inanimate object or
verbal aggression may reduce the chances of
aggressive behaviour, research has shown that
aggression may actually increase due to such
interventions.
Cognitive interventions
• Cognitive interventions have focused on the following
techniques :
- Apologies
- Preattribution to unintentional causes
- Preventing oneself from ruminating
• While apologies and excuses are oriented towards making
attempts to reduce other’s anger through the process of
appraisal, the other two techniques aim at reducing one’s
own anger and work on the principle of cognitive deficit, that
is, clouding of information processing about the consequence
of one’s actions due to extreme anger.
• Apologies
• When a person apologizes before the other
person who has been hurt, his/her appraisal
of the apparent aggressor’s behaviour is taken
to be an unintentional one.
• Research has also shown that effect of
apologies or excuses depend upon the extent
to which these are honest (rather than
concealing a malicious intent) and convey that
the apparent aggressor’s behaviour was out of
his/her personal control.
• Preattribution to unintentional causes
• According to the concept of cognitive deficit,
when a person is extremely angry, his/her
capacity to process information regarding the
consequences of his/her action gets reduced.
• In order to avoid that, one can, while visiting a
potentially irritating person or setting, may
pre-attribute one’s anger to the other person’s
unique ways of communication rather than his
malicious intentions.
• Preventing oneself from ruminating
• Similar to the effect of the preattribution to
unintentional causes, preventing oneself from
ruminating or thinking repeatedly about
previous or imagined irritating behaviour of
others may help avoid cognitive deficit.
• For example, reading articles about one’s
interest or watching pleasant or comedy films
may check ruminations and help the person
‘cool-off’ to regain control over one’s cognitive
processes.
• Other relevant techniques
• Exposure to non-aggressive models (for example, having the
photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, etc.) may
help regulate one’s anger as these model provide alternative
ways to respond to an irritating situation.
• Developing social skills to get along with others is another
important way to reduce anger. Often anger arises out of the
irritation caused by a lack of social skill to convey one’s wishes
to others and by a resulting thought that others do not care
for one’s wishes. Learning to get along with other persons
may help reduce anger in such situations.
• Reponses that are incompatible with anger such as humour,
empathy etc. may help reduce aggressive behaviour.
 Community approach to
preventing Aggression
The community mobilization approach attempts to reach individuals,
relationships, communities, and the larger society.
It breaks down this large task of affecting wide scale social change down so
that organizations can stay focused and effective.
Key components of the approach are:
1. Guiding principles articulate the conceptual framework for the work.
2. Process of Community Mobilization describes the design and theoretical
assumptions of the work.
3. Implementation strategies organize the myriad of activities suggested to
ensure that all the spheres within the Ecological Model are reached.
• Guiding Principles for Mobilizing Communities
1. Prevention: addressing the root causes
2. Holistic: acknowledge the complex history, culture, and
relationships
3. A process of social change: influence social change must be
approached systematically
4. Repeated exposure to ideas: regular and mutually
reinforcing messages from a variety of sources over a
sustained period
5. Human rights frame work: broader framework of human
rights to create a legitimate channel
6. Community ownership: individuals, groups, and institutions
to strengthen their capacity to be agents of change in their
community
Process of community mobilization:
• Phase 1: Community Assessment: a time to gather information on attitudes and
beliefs about domestic violence and to start building relationships with community
members and professional sectors.
• Phase 2: Raising Awareness: a time to increase awareness about domestic
violence. Awareness can be raised on various aspects of domestic violence
including why it happens and its negative consequences for women, men, families,
and the community.
• Phase 3: Building Networks: a time for encouraging and supporting general
community members and various professional sectors to begin considering action
and changes that uphold womens right to safety. Community members can come
together to strengthen individual and group efforts to prevent domestic violence.
• Phase 4: Integrating Action: a time to make actions against domestic violence part
of everyday life in the community and within institutions policies and practices.
• Phase 5: Consolidating Efforts: a time to strengthen actions and activities for the
prevention of domestic violence to ensure their sustainability, continued growth,
and progress.
Strategies at varied levels
 Community approach to
aggression in schools
• Some factors appear to be protective,
• they reduce the chance of aggressive behavior in individuals who would
otherwise be at high risk.
• a high-income family, reducing the risk-increasing effects of perinatal
complications.
• a shy temperament,
• high IQ,
• being firstborn,
• having a stable family,
• having affectionate caregivers,
• having parents who regularly attend religious services,
• and coming from small families characterized by low discord.
• global,
• using multiple social learning and behavioral
interventions
• the undesirability of aggression;
• nonaggressive methods of solving problems;
• improved social skills;
• and improved television viewing habits
• Several communities, including Oakland,
California, and San Antonio, Texas, report
success with a program for
• reducing early-grade school failure, one of the
risk factors for aggression.
• involves daily tutoring of kindergartners by
specially trained high school seniors
• preventive approach developed by the public
health community
• violent events are preceded by escalation
from verbal conflict through insults and
threats,
• likelihood of escalation is increased by the
presence of bystanders
• who do not attempt to mediate
• Using culturally specific role plays and other
devices,
• the Boston Violence Prevention Curriculum
was developed for use in tenth-grade health
classes,
• to teach methods of interrupting escalation to
violence.
• emphasizes the undesirability of violent
behavior, nonviolent responses to
provocation, and mediation skills
• Other behavioral approaches
• parent training in consistent discipline (see
review by Kazdin, 1985),
• combined parent and teacher training
(Hawkins et al., 1991), preschool enrichment
programs of the Head Start type (Berrueta-
Clement et al., 1984), and school-based
programs to combat bullying and reduce peer
rejection
• preventive interventions are more likely to be
successful
• if they involve parents, peers, teachers, and
significant others in the community,
• and if the intervention is adapted to the cultural
norms of the target age, ethnic, and socioeconomic
category.
• if they begin early—perhaps as early as the
preschool years—
• and if they are based on clear theoretical models of
aggression.
• Juvenile Delinquency
• Juvenile Justice Act, 1986 defines “a juvenile or child, who in case of a
boy has not completed age of 16 years and in case of a girl 18 years of
age”.
• Government of India while discharging its international obligations
revoked the JJA Act, 1986 by 2000 Act and the distinction regarding the
age between male and female juveniles was done away.
• According to the new law, age of juvenile for both male and female
involved in conflict with law has been fixed at 18 years.
• A juvenile in conflict with law under the JJ (C & P) Act, 2000 is “a juvenile
who is alleged to have committed an offence but has not completed 18
years of age on the date of commission of said offence”. And under the
Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act 2015 juvenile defined under
section.2 (35), “juvenile means a child below the age of eighteen years”.
• Prof. Walter C. Reckless16 has suggested stand
to resolve the problem of defining
delinquency. These three problems are:-
a. Delinquency as a social problem
b. Delinquency as a behavioural problem.
c. Delinquency as a legal problem.
• Prof. Walter C. Reckless has analysed the above said problems in three
distinct steps as, first, “legal definition of crime and delinquency”, second
is “delinquent behaviour as a social problem” and last one is “causative
behavior”. In consequence the “Legal Definition” is not to have the final
declare. Prof. Reckless has very rightly said “behaviour is an observable
phenomenon. It is the focus of concern and it is the target for outlawing,
i.e. for legal definition or for coverage by criminal law and sanctions.”
• The percentage of crimes registered under IPC against the
delinquents to total IPC crimes reported in the whole country
during 2004-2005 remained static at 1.0%.
• There was a slight increment to 1.1% in 2006 which again
remained stagnant in 2007.
• In 2008 it again increased slightly to 1.2% but thereafter
decreased to 1.1% in 2009.
• This share again decreased to 1.0% in 2010 and thereafter
slightly increased to 1.1% in 2011.
• Further, the share increased slightly to 1.2% in 2012 and
remained stagnant at 1.2% in 2013 and 2014-18.
• The cases registered under various sections of IPC crimes
against juveniles in conflict with law in 2014 have increased by
5.7% over 2013 as 31,725 cases against juveniles were
registered under IPC crimes during 2013 which increased to a
total number of 33,526 such cases in 2014.
• The highest number of cases registered against juveniles were
reported under the crime head which included
• theft‟ (20.0%),
• rape‟ (5.9%) and
• grievous hurt‟ & 'assault on women with intent to outrage her
modesty' (4,7% each).
• These four crime heads have together accounted for 39.7% of
total IPC cases (33,526 cases) of juveniles associated in
conflict with law.
• Special And Local Laws (SLL) CRIMES: Data
shows that the number of juveniles arrested
under SLL crimes have increased by 21.8% in
2014 as compared to 2013.
• The highest percentage of cases registered
against juveniles was reported for the crime
under „Prohibition Act‟ which accounted for
41.3% of total SLL cases (5,039 cases)
registered against juveniles19.
• The States of M.P (6,346 cases), Maharashtra
(5,175 cases), Bihar (4,044 cases), Rajasthan
(2,174 cases), Delhi (1,946 cases),
Chhattisgarh (1,611 cases) and Gujarat
(1,595cases) have reported high incidence of
cases registered against juvenile under various
sections of IPC.
• These seven States taken together have
accounted for 68.3% of total cases of juveniles
in conflict with law in the country.
• Community approach to Juvenile delinquency
1) Locality development
2) Social planning
3) Social action
Locality development and social planning lend themselves to a
consensus view of society and the maintenance of social
stability.
Social action is oriented toward a conflict view of society and the
promotion of institutional social change.
These approaches need not be applied in a mutually exclusive
manner
and can be either mixed or phased in their application to specific
community problems.
1) Locality development:
• the primary goal is to establish cooperative
working relationships and widespread interest
and participation in community affairs.
• Consensus tactics are used by the community
organizer to bring various interest groups,
social classes, and ethnic groups together to
identify their common concerns.
• It is assumed that these groups have interests
that are basically reconcilable and amenable
to rational problem-solving.
• However, it is the process of bringing the
community together, rather than the
accomplishment of particular tasks, that is
central to locality development. In social
planning
• Social planning:
• design and application of controlled rational
change by "experts" who possess highly
technical skills and specialized knowledge.
• Goal is, the completion of a specified task
related to the solution of a tangible problem.
• Community members are viewed as
customers or beneficiaries of services and are
not involved in the planning or delivery
process.
• Social change tends to be gradual,
maintenance-oriented, removed from politics,
and regulated and controlled by professionals
who are not themselves members of the client
population.
• Social action:
• to mobilize the economically and politically
disadvantaged members of the community to
make effective demands for the redistribution
of resources and alteration of institutional
policies.
• Dominant political and economic groups and
institutions are often the targets of change
and considered to be part of the community's
problems.
• Natural disaster:
• Disaster Ecology Model (Shultz et al., 2007b),
“a disaster is characterized as an encounter
between forces of harm and a human
population in harm’s way, influenced by the
ecological context, that creates demands
exceeding the coping capacity of the affected
community.”
• Psychological consequences:
1. Widespread scope: The “psychological footprint” of disaster is larger
than the “medical footprint”
• People who are unharmed may be psychologically distressed.
• People who are injured – additional distress of injury
2. Spectrum of severity of psychological reactions:
• Some brief and mild distress and go back to full functionality.
• Some detrimental behaviour changes.
• Others – PTSD, MDD, GAD
3. Range of Duration:
From the warning phase (begins) to actual impact (escalates)
Aftermath, distress continues- hardships of enduring physical destruction,
scarcity of basic needs, displacement, community-wide disruption of
services, loss of resources, and painful rehabilitation from physical injury
4. Natural disaster vs. human generated disaster
Psychological distress lesser in natural disasters.

Five hazard descriptors predict the extent of

mental and behavioral health ramifications:
1) Absolute magnitude: the size of harm
determines the amplitude of impact
2) Duration: the duration of threat = stress
response
3) Frequency: multiple strikes tends to be more
devastating than a single event
4. proximity to the geographical “epicenter” of
destruction forecasts the severity of exposure
and the attendant psychological effects.
5. Geographic scope and scale: psychological
consequences are experienced both
individually and collectively.
• Pronounced disaster mental and behavioral
health impacts are generally restricted to the
subset of high-profile disasters that possess
two or more of the following four
characteristics:
(1) large numbers of injuries and/or deaths,
(2) widespread destruction and property
damage,
(3) disruption of social support and ongoing
economic problems,
and (4) intentional human causation.
• Psychological impacts:
1) Direct impact (intense exposure), survivors
(witness to loss) and indirect victims (socially
connected, volunteer/professionals).
Who will suffer more:
1) Higher risks for women
2) Marginalized minorities
3) Increased risk decreased SES
4) Pre-history and psychiatric history
5) Chronic physical health conditions and
physical disability
• Who gets referred:Inability to perform necessary everyday functions
Disorientation (confused, unable to give name/date/ time/place) Suicidal or
homicidal thoughts, plans, or actions Domestic violence Acute psychosis (hearing
voices, seeing visions, delusional thinking) Significant disturbance of memory
Severe anxiety, extreme fear of another disaster Problematic use of alcohol,
prescription or illicit drugs Depression (hopelessness, despair, withdrawal)
Hallucinations, paranoia
• The ideal triage system possesses these
characteristics:
• 1. Rapid (less than 1 min per patient)
• 2. Scalable (saving time by triaging large groups
collectively as numbers of incoming casualties
mount)
• 3. Recurring (triage must be updated with every
patient encounter)
• 4. Integrates both medical and behavioral triage
• 5. Includes resource-based criteria for exclusion from
care (accounting for the possibility of insufficient
medical/behavioral resources to treat all critical
patients immediately)
• Psychological interventions:
1. Psychological debriefing:
a) Introduced in the 1980s under the name “critical incident
stress debriefing” (CISD), psychological debriefing
b) intended for use within 48 h of the traumatic incident and
features brief education about trauma reactions.
c) A stepwise process in which survivors are prompted to
disclose cognitive and emotional aspects of the traumatic
event. Participants are explicitly asked to describe “the worst
part” of the experience and their accompanying
psychological and physical reactions
d) Scientific evaluations – CISD effects questionable
• a single intervention technique vs. a spectrum
of actions be considered as components of
early intervention:
1. securing basic needs,
2. applying the principles of psychological first aid,
3. conducting needs assessments,
4. monitoring the rescue and recovery environment,
5. providing outreach and information,
6. fostering resilience and recovery,
7. conducting triage and referral,
8. and providing psychiatric treatment for an
identified subset of trauma survivors
• Psychological first aid:
1) Draw upon survivor’s strength and increase
resiliency
2) Discussion of trauma is not prompted but if
survivor wants to talk is not stopped
Aims:
(1)Re establish safety,
(2)Reduce acute stress reactions,
and (3) guide the survivor to access resources
• the five essential elements of early
intervention, defined as:
1. safety (decrease perceptions of threat and
vulnerability),
2. Calming (relaxed breathing techniques),
3. Connectedness (reunite with social support)
4. self-efficacy (establish degree of personal
control)
5. hope (hopeful appraisal of future)
• Intermediate intervention:
persons exhibiting continued high levels of
disaster distress (e.g.,high levels of anxiety,
high levels of physiological arousal, lack of
coping skills) that markedly interfere with
daily functioning.
• Long term intervention : PTSD is the most commonly
seen psychiatric disorder.
• The intervention of choice for PTSD is a cognitive-behaviorally
based psychotherapy approach.
• The overall aims of such an approach are the restructuring of
dysfunctional cognitions, redressing of problematic behaviors,
and modulating affective responses.
• Types of therapy - exposure therapy, stress
inoculation therapy, systematic
desensitization, cognitive processing therapy,
cognitive therapy, assertiveness training, and
biofeedback/ relaxation training.
• The exposure-based approach has been found to be most
efficacious in treating PTSD.
• An exposure-based approach addresses the pervasive
avoidant behavioral patterns that often result from trauma
exposure and lead to significant impairment in daily
functioning. The approach seeks to reexpose survivors to the
disaster experience in a therapeutic and safe manner.
• Geriatrics simply refers to the medical care of the
elderly people.
• Gerontology on the other hand refers to the “study
of physical and psychological changes which are
incident to old age”.
• the distribution of respondents according to age
categories of
• the young-old (60-70 years),
• middle-aged old (71 to 80 years) and
• oldest-old (81+ years)
• assessing the extent of independence versus
dependence prevalent among the elderly.
• in India accounted for 7.4% of the total
population in 2001,
• 8.6% (104 million; 53 million females and 51
million males) in 2011
• and has been projected to increase to 19% by
the year 2050 [1,5,6].
• Globally, demographers predict that it will
take only another 25-30 years for the 65 years
and older age group to reach double the
number of children under 5 years of age.
• This means that future populations might
require more geriatricians than pediatricians.
• one out of two elderly in India suffers from at
least one chronic disease which requires life-
long medication.
• impairment of special sensory functions like
vision and hearing.
• A decline in immunity as well as age-related
physiological changes leads to an increased
burden of communicable diseases in the
elderly.
The effect of :
• age changes,
• impaired immunological function,
• poor nutrition,
• multiple pathology,
• sensory deficits,
• psychiatric disorders
• and inter-current drug treatment interact both
to modify and mask a disease process in the
elderly.
• The biggest hurdle to a physician attending a geriatric patient
is existence of co-morbidities which refers to presence of two
or more diseases in one individual. These multi-morbidities
more than often interact with each other to lead to non-
specific symptoms, correction of which require thorough
assessment.
• Single system disease even if present might manifest
atypically. Formulating a treatment plan also becomes
painstaking especially against the background that most drugs
act more potently in the elderly thus increasing the risk of
adverse drug reactions and interactions. This is compounded
by rapid deterioration, if the dominant disease remains
untreated and rapid progression to complications. All these
changes take lesser time to occur and a much longer time to
reverse.
• geriatric care has to address two-fold
problems- first, basic health promotion to
retard the rate of physiological aging and
second medical management of diseases and
disorders incident to old age.
• It has been reported that a geriatric individual
takes an average of six prescription drugs
concurrently and often suffers from adverse
drug reactions
• Geriatric pharmacotherapy needs to be
included as a component of undergraduate
and postgraduate education in medicine as
well as in other disciplines like nursing and
pharmacy.
• The most recent national policy effort is the National
Programme for the Health Care of the Elderly (NPHCE),
launched by the government of India in 2011 with the vision
to provide accessible, affordable and high quality long term
dedicated services to the elderly by creating more enabling
environment for a society for all ages to promote active and
healthy ageing.
• The program however seems to have overlooked the
problems of care-givers of the beneficiaries. Although a
number of dedicated services have been set up at various
levels of healthcare delivery, these services lack specialized
equipment and trained geriatric healthcare team to bring
about target oriented management of geriatric problems.
• As life expectancy increases, so has the influence of mental
illness on older persons’ quality of life, especially at advanced
ages.
• At the global level, the number of people living with
dementia is expected to nearly double every 20 years.
• Depressive disorders and symptoms also affect many older
persons, particularly the most vulnerable among them living
in long-term care facilities.
• Depression can be triggered by factors such as isolation and
loss of family members or friends, which are common in old
age, diminishing quality of life as well as negatively interacting
with physical health conditions. The need for mental health
care in old age is thus growing in scope and urgency.
• Climate change and natural hazards have significant
implications for human health, with older people often more
vulnerable than the young.
• The increased health risks associated with advancing age
make older persons particularly sensitive to extreme weather
conditions such as heatwaves, which are increasing in
frequency due to climate change.
• Older persons are also more at risk when natural hazards
occur because they are less mobile and often live alone.
• Older persons in refugee, asylum-seeker, returnee and statelessness
situations are also faced with severe health-related challenges due to lack
of appropriate healthcare services.
• Discrimination, including with regard to opportunities to earn income;
long distances to health facilities, particularly in rural areas; as well as fees
for transportation and medical treatment are hindrances to accessing
health care, especially for those with chronic conditions.
• The breakdown of social ties—or fabric—of families and communities
caused by forced displacement poses additional risks to older persons
such as marginalization and strains on mental health and well-being.
 Impact of substance abuse on
families
• First, it may be seen as protecting and sustaining both strong
and weak members, helping them to deal with stress and
pathology while nurturing younger and more vulnerable
members.
• Secondly, the family may be a source of tension, problems and
pathology, influencing weaker members in harmful ways,
including destructive drug or alcohol use.
• Thirdly, it may be viewed as a mechanism for family members
to interact with broader social and community groups, such as
peer groups, schools, work colleagues and supervisors and
persons associated with religious institutions.
• Fourthly, the family may be seen as an important point of
intervention - a natural organizational unit for transferring and
building social and community values.
• Negativism. Any communication that occurs among family
members is negative, taking the form of complaints, criticism,
and other expressions of displeasure.
• Parental inconsistency. Rule setting is erratic, enforcement is
inconsistent, and family structure is inadequate. Children are
confused because they cannot figure out the boundaries of
right and wrong. As a result, they may behave badly in the
hope of getting their parents to set clearly defined boundaries
• Parental denial. Despite obvious warning
signs, the parental stance is: (1) “What
drug/alcohol problem? We don’t see any drug
problem!” or (2) after authorities intervene:
“You are wrong! My child does not have a
drug problem!”
• Miscarried expression of anger. Children or
parents who resent their emotionally deprived
home and are afraid to express their outrage
use drug abuse as one way to manage their
repressed anger.
• Self-medication. Either a parent or child will
use drugs or alcohol to cope with intolerable
thoughts or feelings, such as severe anxiety or
depression.
• Unrealistic parental expectations. If parental
expectations are unrealistic, children can
excuse themselves from all future
expectations
• Research has found that friends are more
similar in their use of marijuana than in any
other activity or attitude. In this situation,
drug use by peers may exert a greater
influence than the attitudes of parents. This
researcher observed that peer and parental
influences are synergistic, with the highest
rates of marijuana use being observed among
adolescents whose parents and friends were
drug users
• . Hence, parents exercising traditional family
roles may be able to limit the influence of
peer groups on children's attitudes towards
drug use and therefore have a crucial
influence on children's behaviour
• 4) Family factors that may lead to or intensify
drug use are thought to include prolonged or
traumatic parental absence, harsh discipline,
failure to communicate on an emotional level,
chaotic or disturbed members and parental
use of drugs, which provides a negative role
model for children
• Dysfunctional drug or alcohol use may mask
an underlying emotional illness. A frequent
finding from clinical assessment of users is a
"dual diagnosis", where two or more clinical
conditions exist at the same time in an
individual. Multiple problems in the family
are also very common.
• Intradisciplinary: working within a single discipline.
• Crossdisciplinary: viewing one discipline from the
perspective of another.
• Multidisciplinary: people from different disciplines
working together, each drawing on their disciplinary
knowledge.
• Interdisciplinary: integrating knowledge and methods
from different disciplines, using a real synthesis of
approaches.
• Transdisciplinary: creating a unity of intellectual
frameworks beyond the disciplinary perspectives.
Which approach is the best
• cross-disciplinary (and intersectoral) work can take one of
three forms from weak to strong collaboration.
• The weakest (though still worthwhile) form is multidisciplinary
collaboration, which implies researchers from two or more
disciplines working, either simultaneously or sequentially, but
independently, from their own disciplinary perspective, in
order to solve the same problem.
• This includes publishing in a journal outside one’s discipline
without direct collaboration with others from that discipline.
• In interdisciplinary collaboration researchers from different
disciplines work together to solve a common problem, yet
each one still operating from their respective disciplinary
perspective without necessarily creating new theories or
methods.
• The strongest form of collaboration is a transdisciplinary
process in which researchers bring together their discipline-
specific ideas to jointly create new theories, concepts, or
methods that transcend disciplinary differences to solve a
shared problem. This chapter focuses on the history and
evolution of a multi- and interdisciplinary community
psychology and the promise of transdisciplinarity.
• behavior and problems must be understood
ecologically—that is,
• in terms of how people actually and naturally live
and work in organic social groups (families, networks,
organizations, and communities).
• An ecological perspective also considers how
peopleare influenced systemically by these same
social levels, as well as by structural factors -
institutions, societal forces, and government policies,
and by material(economic and physical
environmental) forces.
• These social levels, structures, and forces
potentially represent different disciplinary foci
beyond individual psychology. To encompass
all of those levels and domains, in addition to
the intrapsychic and individual behavior
level,community psychology must be
interdisciplinary in scope
• Like community psychologists, anthropologists and
sociologists study individuals, groups, organizations, and
communities, but tend to emphasize cultural patterns; group,
subgroup or population differences; and larger institutional
and policy influences on them.
• In contrast, traditional psychological theory and research are
primarily individualistic. Thus, sociology and anthropology are
both complementary to psychology while also being the
disciplines most similar to community psychology as multi-
level, ecologically-oriented social sciences.
• The major differences are in community psychology’s
traditional focus on individual wellness as the primary
dependent variable and sociology and anthropology’s longer,
richer history of theory development, particularly at all the
social levels beyond the individual.
• requires two main ingredients:
• 1) careful consideration of the specific
ecological contexts of each problem at
different levels of analysis and intervention,
and how change occurs over time;
• and 2) relationships with communities that
are experiencing injustices. Understanding the
nature of injustices requires an understanding
of power inequities and the ways in which
they are translated into regulatory action, and
institutional actions to reinforce economic,
political and other disparities.
• Christin and Perkins proposed a comprehensive
framework for interdisciplinary community research
and action in three dimensions.
• The first dimension examines oppression, liberation,
and wellness as stages of empowerment-- a dynamic
process over time.
• The goal is to identify sources of oppression and help
oppressed groups become liberated which leads to
social, material, physical, and spiritual wellness.
• Theories, research, and practices in human,
organizational and community development may be
useful.
• The second dimension includes the various
levels of analysis and intervention,
• including what are actually clusters of levels
• from the individual psychological level of
personal emotions, cognitions, and behaviors
to micro-systems;
• from the group and organizational level to
relational meso-systems; and from the
community or exo-system level to higher
collective and structural levels of societal
macro-systems (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).
• The third dimension encompasses four
environmental or substantive domains that are
essential for understanding the ecology of
oppression, liberation, and wellness.
• It is these environmental domains that most clearly
imply a need for transdisciplinary research to
understand the economic, political, socio-cultural
(psychology, sociology, and anthropology), and
physical (environmental planning and design
research; environmental psychology, environmental
sociology, environmental law and economics, and
environmental and development policy) contexts of
community disadvantage, power, and wellness at
each level and stage.
• Ethics is a code of thinking and behavior
governed by a combination of personal,
moral, legal, and social standards of what is
right.
• Program effectiveness. Consistent ethical
behavior can lead to a more effective
program. Considering ethical principles in all
aspects of a community intervention will lead
you to finding the most effective and
community-centered methods, and will bring
dividends in participation, community support
and funding possibilities.
• Standing in the community. An organization
that has a reputation for ethical action is far
more likely to be respected by both
participants and the community as a whole
than one that has been known to be unethical
in the past. An organization that's recognized
as ethical is also apt to be seen as competent,
and to be trusted to treat people with respect
and to do what it says it will do. That
community trust makes it easier to recruit
staff, volunteers, Board members, and
participants, and to raise money and public
support.
• Moral credibility and leadership. If you work for the
betterment of the world -- whether you see that as social
change, social justice, the alleviation of suffering, the
fostering of human dignity, or simply the provision of services
-- it's consistent to act as you wish the rest of the world to act.
Ethical action reflects why you started your community
intervention in the first place. You have a moral obligation to
yourself, the individuals you work with, and the community to
be ethical in all you do, and to expect the same from others. If
you fulfill that obligation, and everyone knows it, your voice
will have greater impact when you speak out for what you
believe is right, or against what you believe is wrong, and
others will follow you.
• Professional and legal issues. Many of the
health and human service professions often
involved in community interventions are held
to specific codes of ethics by their professional
certification or licensure organizations. If
members of the profession violate these
standards, they can be disciplined, or even
lose their licenses to practice.
• Do no harm. Hippocrates put this in words
over 2,000 years ago, and it's still Rule
Number One.
• Respect people as ends, not means: consider
and treat everyone as a unique individual who
matters, not as a number in a political or
social or clinical calculation.
• Respect participants' ability to play a role in
determining what they need. Don't assume
that professional staff or program planners
necessarily know what's best for a community
or individual.
• Respect everyone's human, civil, and legal
rights. This encompasses such issues as non-
discrimination and cultural sensitivity.
• Do what is best for everyone under the
circumstances. You're not necessarily going to
be able to help everyone all the time, but you
can try to get as close as possible.
• Don't abuse your position or exploit a
participant to gain a personal advantage or to
exercise power over another person. This
refers to taking advantage of participants or
others for political, social, sexual, or financial
gain.
• Don't attempt an intervention in areas in which you're not
trained and/or competent. This goes along with "do no
harm," but it's not always possible. Just as there are times
when no intervention may be preferable to doing something
counterproductive, there may be times when any intervention
is better than none at all. In those circumstances, you may
have to learn as you go, getting all the help you can and
hoping you don't do anything harmful. It's important to
distinguish between doing what you can and getting in over
your head to the point where what you're doing becomes
truly unethical and harmful.
• Actively strive to improve or correct, to the
extent possible, the situations of participants
in your program and the community. In other
words, it's incumbent on you to try to create
the best and most effective program possible
to meet the needs of participants, and to
address underlying conditions or situations in
a way that will benefit the community as a
whole.