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Reducing Disorder by Changing the Social Situation

23 September, 2015 - 14:33

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  1. Explain the advantages of group therapy and self-help groups for treating disorder.
  2. Evaluate the procedures and goals of community mental health services.

Although the individual therapies that we have discussed so far in this chapter focus primarily on the psychological and biological aspects of the bio-psycho-social model of disorder, the social dimension is never out of the picture. Therapists understand that disorder is caused, and potentially prevented, in large part by the people with whom we interact. A person with schizophrenia does not live in a vacuum. He interacts with his family members and with the other members of the community, and the behavior of those people may influence his disease. And depression and anxiety are created primarily by the affected individual’s perceptions (and misperceptions) of the important people ar ound them. Thus prevention and treatment are influenced in large part by the social context in which the person is living.