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Article: Community Psychology
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Public Health
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY
Community psychology (CP), as a discipline, began in 1965 in Swampscott, Massachusetts, during a meeting of psychologists discussing training for community mental health. This group identified CP to be distinct from clinical psychology and community mental health. The original focus was on social and cultural influences on mental health, and it has since widened, with CP now being a discipline within psychology that examines ecological issues beyond the individual level, explores the value of diversity, challenges narrow unidimensional measures of health, and validates psychologists as agents of social changes. A public health approach was used to help provide the ...