Introducing Preventive Psychiatry into a Community

Abstract

Its planning stage completed, in October, 1948 a group for preventive psychiatry passed on to action and began to try to work in a community. In common with other groups—psychiatric, social work, government, race relations projects, and so on—we were "outsiders" moving in with the purpose of effecting some sort of change of behavior on the part of members of that community. As might be expected, a number of problems of relations with the community arose. Some of these problems, and their solutions, will be described in the following pages. While we were aided in our efforts by certain kinds of awareness, we were also handicapped by particular blind spots. Our experiences, therefore, are of concern to applied anthropologists, and it is hoped that this paper will serve to draw attention to this problem area as a promising one for research.