GROUP DYNAMICS AND RESOLUTION OF CONFLICT IN COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRIC PRACTICE

Abstract

Psychiatrists in the United States, engaged in the development of local services in city areas of high population density and low socio-economic status, have been confronted and found themselves caught in serious conflict with various citizens' groups. Some citizen groups challenge delivery of mental health services to patient populations considered major by psychiatric planners. The interest of such citizens center on easily perceptible patient populations believed most disturbing to the social unrest of the local areaalcoholics
or drug addicts. Others seek in their challenge a means to "power," and thus to personal ego-enhancement and improved mental health. Their interest is not in alleviation of disease. Still others, also interested in power, seek the latter through direct desire to control the funding of new health centers motivated altruistically for their own peoples or sometimes from venal desire.