Mental Health and Social Change: An Ecological Perspective
HARRY R. BRICKMAN M.D.1
1 Director, County of Los Angeles Department of Mental Health, 1106 S. Crenshaw Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. 90019
Through the community mental health movement, psychiatry has a chance to make an impact on the phenomenon of mental illness. But there is need to balance psychiatry's social control function with its function as an agent of social change. The author suggests that this can be done by means of a "rehumanizing" orientation; he cites the experience of the Los Angeles community mental health program to illustrate some of his concepts.
