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Facilitating Change: Where and How Should Community Psychology Intervene?

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A Quarter Century of Community Psychology

Abstract

Struggles over where and how to facilitate social change have remained central to the field of Community Psychology since its birth at Swampscott, Massachusetts in the spring of 1965. Difficult issues within the field, ranging from debates over empowerment versus prevention, to the challenges of culturally relevant intervention and the facilitation of community-wide change, all can be linked back to the two central questions of where and how. Community psychologists’ answers to these questions over the past 25 years reveal much about the values, assumptions, and practices of the field.

The main focus on prevention has led to a necessary concern with the interaction between social system structures and functions and the mental health of populations...It was pointed out that community psychology would frequently be involved with faciliatating change rather than with preventing anything. Bennettet. al.m., 1966, pp. 6–7

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Yoshikawa, H., Shinn, M. (2002). Facilitating Change: Where and How Should Community Psychology Intervene?. In: Revenson, T.A., et al. A Quarter Century of Community Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8646-7_2

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