Social Psychiatry - Current Work

Current Work

Social psychiatry can be most effectively applied in helping to develop mental health promotion and prevent certain mental illnesses by educating individuals, families, and societies.

Social psychiatry has been important in developing the concept of major "life events" as precipitants of mental ill health, including for example bereavement, promotion, moving house, having a child.

Originally inpatient centers, many therapeutic communities now operate as day centers, often focused on borderline personality disorder and run by psychotherapists or art therapists rather than psychiatrists.

Social psychiatrists help test the cross-cultural use of psychiatric diagnoses and assessments of need or disadvantage, showing particular links between mental illness and unemployment, overcrowding and single parent families.

Social psychiatrists also work to link concepts such as self-esteem and self-efficacy to mental health, and in turn to socioeconomic factors.

Social psychiatrists work on social firms in regard to people with mental health problems. These are regular businesses in the market that employ a significant number of people with disabilities, who are paid regular wages and work on the basis of regular work contracts. There are approximately 2,000 social firms in Europe and a large percentage of people with disabilities who work in social firms have a psychiatric disability. Some are specifically for people with psychiatric disabilities.(Schwarz, G. & Higgins, G: Marienthal the social firms network Supporting the Development of Social Firms in Europe, UK, 1999)

Social psychiatrists often focus on rehabilitation in a social context, rather than "treatment" per se. A related approach is community psychiatry.

Facilitating the social inclusion of people with mental health problems is a major focus of modern social psychiatry.