Preventive strategies for dealing with violence among blacks

Abstract

In regular medicine if a patient goes to a doctor to be treated for a rat bite, the physician cleans the bite, dresses it, gives antibiotics, and gives a tetanus shot. The physician practicing social medicine would give our imaginary patient the same treatment but would go a step further; he would arrange for someone to go into the patient's community and set rat traps. A similar distinction is made between general psychiatry and community psychiatry, and this distinction highlights one of the main principles of the community psychiatrist's mission, community development. Community development being the art of helping a community achieve a social and interpersonal milieu that promotes an optimum level of mental health (Freed, 1972; Freed, 1972). This aspect of community psychiatry takes on an even greater significance when the community being served is a lower socioeconomic, minority community because of the conditions found in such communities that can impair the overall mental health of the community's individuals, families and groups. This article will illustrate the principle of community development, the role of one psychiatrist in community development, and its importance to deprived minority communities by describing a community psychiatry approach to the problem of black-on-black homicide.