Prevention in human services 

About: Prevention in human services is an academic journal. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Mental health & Empowerment. It has an ISSN identifier of 0270-3114. Over the lifetime, 207 publications have been published receiving 5285 citations.

Citizen empowerment: A developmental perspective.

Abstract: Since the late 1970s, the notion of empowerment has appeared with increasing frequency in discussion of preventive social and community intervention. While the idea of empowerment is intuitively appealing both for theory and practice, its applicability has been limited by continuing conceptual ambiguity. Based on a small ?G study of emerging citizen leaders in grassroots organizations, this article proposes a view of empowerment as a necessarily long-term process of adult learning and development. In this framework, empowerment is further described as the continuing construction of a multi-dimensional participatory competence. This conception encompasses both cognitive and behavioral change. Implications for practice are also addressed.

Studies in Empowerment: Introduction to the Issue

Abstract: As it turns out, my sense of this need seems to have been felt by others as well. Recent papers by Chavis, Stucky, and Wandersman (1983), Gottlieb (1983) and by Tyler, Pargament, and Gatz (1983) have addressed similar themes.

Review of Religion and Mental Health: Prevention and the Enhancement of Psychosocial Functioning

Abstract: Summary After reviewing a representative sample of the better studies exploring how religion relates to mental disorders, we have discovered several domains of positive association between the two. These include family variables, well-being and self-esteem, personal adjustment, social conduct, alcohol and drug abuse, sexual permissiveness, and suicide. On the other hand, we found little evidence supporting religious influence in the prevention of serious clinical diagnoses like bipolar disorders, major depression, schizophrenia, obsessions, and panic disorders. The role of religion in these, however, has not been sufficiently studied. Contrary to some opinions, religious affiliation is not damaging to mental health, nor is it entirely predictive of better mental health. The more useful question to ask is how a person is religious rather than whether a person is religious. Specific measures of religiosity such as intrinsic and extrinsic orientation, level of commitment, and activity level provide more info...

Stress, coping, and Black mental health: preliminary findings from a national study.

Abstract: Despite the fact that blacks are disproportionately exposed to social conditions considered to be antecedents of psychiatric disorder, epidemiologic studies have not conclusively demonstrated that blacks exhibit higher rates of mental illness than whites. The present paper employed a research approach which considered not only rates of psychological distress, but also the stressors that blacks face and the various coping strategies used to adapt to those stressors. The data were obtained from the National Survey of Black Americans, the first study of a national probability sample of the adult black population. The information on mental health and coping was collected within the context of a single stressful personal problem. The analysis indicates that prayer was an extremely important coping response used by blacks especially among those making less than $10,000, above the age of 55 and women. The informal social network was used quite extensively as a means of coping with problems. This was true for all sociodemographic groups studied. The young (18-34) were less likely than those age 35 and above to seek professional help, while women were more likely than men to seek formal assistance. Income was not related to professional help seeking. With respect to the use of specific professional help sources, hospital emergency rooms, private physicians and ministers were used most frequently. The implications of these findings for research on black mental health and primary prevention are discussed.

Restructuring the ecology of the school as an approach to prevention during school transitions: Longitudinal follow-ups and extensions of the School Transitional Environment Project (STEP).

Abstract: Summary Normative school transitions are often accompanied by deterioration in students' socio-emotional, behavioral and academic adjustment, and poorer outcomes in later adolescence and young adulthood. The current paper describes a preventive intervention for students experiencing normative transitions into middle grade schools and junior and senior high schools-the School Transitional Environment Project (STEP). The program is based on a transactional-ecological model of preventive intervention that employs a school restructuring and transformation approach in order to prevent the deleterious effects of school transitions and create school environments that are developmentally enhancing. Core features of STEP seek to change the ecological characteristics of the school setting in ways that: (a) reduce the adaptational demands of coping with flux and complexity in new school settings; (b) increase access to and the provision of important emotional and academic/instrumental support and guidance from schoo...