Understandings of Community among People Using Publicly Funded Community Mental Health Services
50 Years After Deinstitutionalization: Mental Illness in Contemporary Communities
ISBN: 978-1-78560-403-4, eISBN: 978-1-78560-402-7
Publication date: 4 July 2016
Abstract
Purpose
To understand how people using community public mental health services conceptualize community and their place within it within the post-deinstitutionalization era.
Methodology/approach
Two hundred ninety-four service users completed structured interviews in two urban, outpatient, public, and community mental health facilities in the Northeast. Quantitative and qualitative responses to the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status, Community Ladder version, were analyzed to understand perspectives on community.
Findings
Mean subjective community status ladder score among participants was five (SD = 2.56). Participants identified four broad categories of definitions of community: geographic community; community related to social definitions; contributing to society; and mental health service-user communities. Explanations for the location of their placement on the ladder (subjective community status) include comparisons to self and others, contributions to community, and social relationships. There was also a set of explanations that spoke to the intersection of multiple marginalizations and structural constraints. Finally, we explore relationships among understandings of community and perceptions of place within community.
Originality/value
Community integration is a critical concept for community public mental health services, but little research has explored how mental health service users conceptualize their communities and their roles within them. Understandings of community are crucial to appropriately support peoples’ needs within their communities. Furthermore, participants identify mechanisms that facilitate their personal community standing, and these are areas for potential intervention.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the entire Literacy Project steering committee, and particularly our Consumer Consulting Group. This manuscript benefits from the insightful contributions of Suzanne Garverich, Tammi Arford, and Christopher Prener, whom we thank. This work is supported by NIMH grant 1R01MH096707-04 (PI: Alisa K. Lincoln).
Citation
Lincoln, A.K. and Adams, W.E. (2016), "Understandings of Community among People Using Publicly Funded Community Mental Health Services", 50 Years After Deinstitutionalization: Mental Illness in Contemporary Communities (Advances in Medical Sociology, Vol. 17), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 147-174. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-629020160000017006
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited