FREE ESSAY ON APPLICATIONS OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY TO HOMELESSNESS

APPLICATIONS OF COMMUNITY PSYCHOLOGY TO HOMELESSNESS

One of the goals of the City of Chicago's Health Department is to develop ways to decrease
teenage drug use. Since the number of adolescents who use illegal drugs is growing
rapidly, new and innovative prevention methods must be experimented with in order to
solve the problem. Approaching the issue of teenage drug use from Gerald Caplan's
prevention perspective will bring about the new and innovative results needed to
effectively address this issue. Gerald Caplan (1964) is known as the individual who used
the term prevention as a specific program in the mental health lexicon. According to
Caplan, there are three distinct types of prevention; primary, secondary and tertiary. In
this essay I will use the three main types of prevention as described by Caplan in the
textbook Community Psychology - Linking Individuals and Communities to develop three
prevention programs that the Health Department could use to address the issue of teenage
drug use.
The first type of prevention to be addressed in this essay is primary prevention. The
basic ideal behind this intervention is to stop the problem before it becomes a problem.
At the primary level intervention is given to entire populations when they are not in
need or distress. This is usually done to prevent the occurrence of new cases, especially
when the problem is considered to be an epidemic. Before a problem or circumstance has
the ability to cause harmful effects on a community, a community psychologist will take a
proactive approach and intervene to reduce the chance of future difficulties. Another way
to look at primary prevention is to consider it intervention given to all people in a
particular setting regardless of the need for the intervention. Examples of primary
prevention would be to vaccinate all children for polio and other common diseases even
though the children have not shown any signs of the disease and may not have a
particularly high chance of contracting these diseases. Similarly, a school may require
that all graduating seniors students take a seminar that prepares them for the transition
from high school to college. This is considered to be primary prevention especially if
the community has had no known problems concerning a student's transition from high
school to college. Taking a look specifically at the core issue, which is teenage drug
use in Chicago, I would suggest the following program to alleviate the problem at the
primary prevention level. The Health Department could implement a drug awareness program
called D.A.R.E (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) in the Chicago Public Schools to teach
children about the physical, emotional and psychological dangers of drug use and
importance of saying no to drugs. The targeted population would be young children and
pre-teens between the ages of seven and twelve. Since the main concern of the Health
Department are teenager, a community psychologist using the primary prevention model
would want to lower the rate of new drug use by educating a population of non-user.
Primary prevention would be a proactive step toward decreasing the actually number of
teenager in Chicago who use drugs. By using a program such as D.A.R.E the Health
Department can drastically reduce the number of incidents in which more teenagers
experiment with using drugs since young children and pre-teens would have already been
educated on the importance of saying no. 
The next type of prevention to be addressed in this essay is secondary prevention.
Secondary prevention is also called early intervention because the action is taken in
populations showing the early signs of disorder of difficulty. It would be considered a
secondary prevention method to put those graduating senior who have shown signs such as
poor study habits, lack of time management and lack of maturity in a seminar the prepares
them for the transition from high school to college. At the secondary prevention level,
community psychologist have a standard to which at risk persons are identified as being
predisposed to a particular problem of disorder. The main concern with this approach is
the reliance on stereotypes in order to identify those individuals who need the
assistance. There is also the potential to stigmatize individuals because with the
secondary prevention method, community psychologist are placing labels on people who
currently have no problem or disorder and may never develop the particular problem. While
a program such as D.A.R.E extremely effective for kids who have never thought of using
drugs, it would not be as effective at the secondary prevention level. As stated above,
the targeted population at this level would be those persons who are at risk if becoming
a drug abuser. A community psychologist may want to implement a mentoring program such as
Big Brother Big Sister in which at risk youths could be pared with an adult who could be
a positive influence. Those youth who would be considered at risk would meet a specific
predetermined set of criteria that shows an increase likelihood of drug use in the
future. Such factors may include being a member of a minority group e.g. African American
or Latino, family income below the poverty line, minute gang involvement, academic
difficulty and depression. When individual are identified as possessing two or more of
the risk factors for drug abuse, they will be pared with a distinguished member of the
community who can assert a positive influence over the life of the youth in an effort to
steer them away from drug use as an adolescent. Secondary prevention focuses on early
intervention and targeting specific populations that are at risk to problems such as drug
abuse. The Chicago Health Department could benefit by using a mentoring program to sway
the negative influence of drugs with the positive influence of caring members of the
community. 
The third and final prevention method as described by Caplan is tertiary prevention. At
the tertiary level of prevention, the targeted populations are individuals who currently
have the problem or disorder. The intentions of community psychologist who work with this
method are to reduce the intensity and duration of the disorder. The goal is to prevent
re-occurrences and additional complications. If an individual is currently a victim of
drug abuse the Health Department may want to establish a program in which medical
facilities and drug rehabilitation facilities are readily available within Chicago.
Teacher, community members and families may need to be educated about how to deal with
teenagers who use drug and conventional methods on how to persuade those individuals to
seek help. Another aspect of this program may be counseling and educational assistance
for those teenagers who need help staying off of drugs. The tertiary program may
initially appear to be treatment oppose to prevention however, when a teenager is already
addicted to drugs, preventing them from using drugs in not a logical option in itself.
What we want to prevent, at this stage this the future re-occurrence of drug use once the
individual is rehabilitated and the prevention of additional complications that come
along with a drug program such as violent criminal activity or lose of health. 
Finally I would like to take the opportunity to interject my personal opinion by
recommending the specific prevention problem that I believe is best suited to solve the
issue of teenage drug use in the Chicago land area. Drug use among teenagers in urban
communities such as Chicago is a serious and complicated issue that would be impossible
to solve by using one single method. Attacking the problem at multiple levels is the only
way in which the Health Department would be able to progress toward a drug free
adolescence population. While the primary prevention method is certainly important in
educating young children about the dangers of drug use, 100 percent success cannot
realistically be expected. Such methods as the secondary and tertiary prevention plans as
described above should be in place as a safety net to prevent the escalation of
additional problems in those teenagers who did not get the message. The primary
prevention would be the ideal method since it is cost effective and eliminates the
long-term effects that come along with drug use. The secondary method is also a good
method because it can be used as a tool to intervene before an at risk youth develops a
drug problem. The main problem with this of course it that all teenagers who decide to
use drugs may not fit in the at risk categories and all those the fit the description may
not ever experiment with drugs. The tertiary prevention model is extremely costly and
maybe even inefficient due to the difficulties and struggles evolved with becoming a drug
free person. However this option must be available for those who sincerely want to change
their lives to not be neglected. As a result of examining all of the factors that must be
addressed with all three types of prevention, I would suggest using a combination all the
three as the most effective way of preventing drug use among teenagers in Chicago. 
Since one of the goals of the City of Chicago's Health Department is to develop ways to
decrease teenage drug use, new and innovative prevention methods such as primary,
secondary and tertiary prevention must be experimented with in order to solve the
problem. At the primary level intervention is given to entire populations when they are
not in need of it. Using a program such as D.A.R.E would effectively satisfy community
psychologist at this level because it stops the problem before it becomes a problem.
Secondary prevention is also called early intervention because the action is taken in
populations showing the early signs of disorder of difficulty. At the secondary
prevention level, community psychologist have a standard to which at risk persons are
identified as being predisposed to a particular problem of disorder. The main concern
with this approach is the reliance on stereotypes in order to identify those individuals
who need the assistance. The tertiary program may initially appear to be treatment oppose
to prevention however, at this stage the prevention is of future re-occurrence of drug
use once the individual is rehabilitated and the prevention of additional complications.
Together all three of these preventions models can be profoundly effective in decreasing
drug use among adolescences.