Question

For a six-week community outreach program for stress management, what details of intervention should there be?

Answer 1

There is evidence for the effectiveness of community interventions for improving mental health and some social outcomes across social-ecological levels

Families, workplaces, schools, social services, institutions, and communities are potential resources to support mental health.

Multi-sector collaborative Care-

It can help by collaboration of health care reforms and community based resources to support the healthcare setting and improve results of mental health issues.

School based interventions-

Research shows that youth, especially under-resourced youth, are most likely to receive mental healthcare in schools, given barriers to obtaining community mental health services. School infrastructures also allow for large-scale implementation of prevention interventions .

Homeless Services-

Individuals experiencing homelessness are at increased risk for mental illness, trauma, suicide, and medical comorbidities, along with a reduced life expectancy compared with the general population. The recent focus on Housing First in community-based research on homelessness largely reflects an increasing embrace of that model. Housing First is an approach to providing permanent housing without  requirements for pre-placement sobriety or treatment participation.

Criminal Justice

Nearly 40% of jail and prison inmates self-report a history of mental illness, and this prevalence is higher among those with more arrests and time served in a correctional facility. Community interventions in collaboration with the criminal justice system are well positioned to address health disparities experienced by justice-involved populations and the vulnerabilities to justice involvement experienced by those with mental illness in the community.

Global Mental Health

Global mental health is “an area for study, research and practice that places a priority on improving health and achieving equity in health for all people worldwide” .

Mental Health Promotion and Prevention

Communities That Care (CTC) is a community-level prevention planning and implementation system with primary foci on preventing youth (school grades 6–9) substance use, violence, and delinquency and secondary foci on depression, suicide, and other mental health outcomes.

Ethical Considerations

Ethical considerations are of importance to many community interventions given the focus on marginalized and under-resourced populations.