this is unbelievable I feel like a rock
star
alright so I have I’m Ron Harvey I’m an
associate professor of psychology here
at AU BG who here is a member of a
community please raise your hands
everybody here is a member of the
community your hands raise please who
here has heard or knows what community
psychology is ah
my students I see a few of them here
great I’m going to start with a very
banal but it’s very simple and powerful
truth for all members of a community
right and we affect those communities
that those communities also affect us
many people don’t live in ideal
communities maybe they live in poverty
maybe they live in oppressive systems
maybe they live in systems of injustice
and it’s not surprising then that some
of those people would develop
psychological problems anxiety
depression substance abuse but if people
go to get treatment usually they’ll be
treated as an individual they’ll be
treated only and expected to change by
themselves but that doesn’t treat the
larger systems that are maybe causing
some of these problems and so I’m a
community psychologist and I’m
interested in how these larger systems
affect health and well-being so today
I’m going to talk to you what is
community psychology give you a little
bit of
industry I’m going to give you examples
of community psychology research and I
tell you why I think the future belongs
to community psychology and tell you a
little bit about the future of community
research community psychology was
founded in the United States in the mid
1960s the civil rights movement the
women’s liberation movement the youth
movement the protests against the war in
Vietnam the founders of community
psychology were idealistic young
clinical psychologists working in urban
mental health centers and they saw
clients suffering from anxiety
depression substance abuse problems not
very different from today but because
they were young and socially aware they
knew that these people were living in
poverty were oppressed we’re living in
corrupt social systems that were at
least on paper constitutionally obliged
to treat them as full citizens and we’re
not so maybe these responses were
completely normal these founders of
community psychology said we need to get
to the root causes of what causes the
psychological problems that affect
physical and psychological health and
well-being by getting to the root causes
we can do something that maybe like
prevent problems before they start
or we can maybe enhance health and
well-being because it’s much easier to
prevent problems than to treat problems
after they’ve already arrived and so
community psychologist wants to get to
that root part of the of the problem in
order to solve it the other thing that
makes community psychology very
different from other forms of psychology
is we do not pretend to be distant
distant scientists we do not pretend to
be objective scientists we want to be
agents of social change we want to work
in the communities that we are
interested in we want to work with
community members to be our
collaborators we want them to teach us
about what is going on in their system
and what is going on in their
communities and this intuitively makes
sense who knows more about living in an
oppressive system than people living in
oppressive systems who knows more about
living with addiction than people with
addictions so community psychologists
work with people in in schools in an
improv workshop on a school board to be
actually part of the board or in rural
Kenya working with people to set up HIV
awareness programs those people tell us
how they want the programs to work and
we work with them and help them design
it with our knowledge and our expect
ease there’s another advantage to doing
this when people have a say in what goes
on in their communities they own it they
literally own it they helped design it
and when people designed their own
interventions they buy into it much
stronger and they live long after the
expert of the community psychologist has
left I don’t know about you but I don’t
like to be told what to do
most people in most places don’t like to
be told what to do but working with
people as collaborators solves that
problem we also work with lawyers
policymakers government officials
sociologists social workers clinical
psychologists anybody that affects
social change even people in government
the police anybody that has an impact on
the community why I’ve been saying
change a lot who here has tried to
change themselves it’s difficult isn’t
it I heard this quote very early in my
community psychology training if you
truly want to understand something try
to change it this is from it’s I found
three attributions for this quote what
is Kurt Lewin was an influential
twentieth-century psychologist possibly
the godfather of community psychology
Walter Dearborn who’s a student of Yuri
bronfenbrenner also an influential
community psychologist and melts eight
to
all revolutionaries but the idea is that
if you truly want to understand
something try to change it within
yourself you’ll resist but in when we’re
studying individuals in large social
systems we really want to understand
where they exist in how to change it and
the way we do that is by invoking what
we call an ecological model this is
bronfenbrenner ecological Systems Theory
you can see at the center is the
individual you me anybody that we are
talking about inside the community we
have our own biology we have our own age
we have our own genders and that is the
thing that we own immediately outside of
that we have a micro system these are
the people in places and things that
have a direct impact on us
those are our neighbors our families our
schools and so on that we interact with
on a day-to-day basis from there we have
an XO system which is the school funding
the the things that hover over all of
these systems whether or not things get
funded or not the mass media social and
welfare services and so on the outer
layer here is the largest layer it’s the
attitudes and beliefs of the culture it
is the social beliefs the cultural
context in which we live and then
there’s also a chrono system these
things evolve over time right the way
things are today is not the way they
were a hundred years ago the beliefs
that people have 100 years ago
absolutely impact us today the only
thing I would add to this model is the
planetary layer right we exist on a
planet and we are influencing the planet
as well as the planet is influencing us
and if you don’t think concerns about
global climate change is causing anxiety
depression and hopelessness that I
haven’t convinced you yet but I think
maybe I’m on my way so I’ll give you an
example of the the importance of context
and the importance of this ecological
model I study a
specifically I studied people coming out
of treatment and reintegrating back into
their community people with drug
addictions alcohol addictions and so on
so I’m going to give you a little bit of
an idea of the scale of the problem at
least in the United States this these
data are from the substance abuse and
mental health services administration
just a couple years ago so in the United
States in 2015 had twenty 1.7 million
people about 8% of the adult population
had substance abuse problems of those
only 2.3 million about 11% received
treatment so almost 90% of people who
need substance abuse treatment don’t get
it or don’t use it for whatever reason
of those 1.3 million or 2.3 million 1.3
million about 57% have been in treatment
at least once prior so what this
suggests is that there’s this revolving
door of treatment people go into
treatment they’re usually given
detoxification services and then there’s
release back into the community so if
you look at this diagram again you’ll
see treating the individual and then
putting them back in the school
neighborhood doesn’t change anything
individuals it’s very difficult for
individuals to resist the systems that
bring them into being and that caused
problems in 1975 a group of addicts
created a system called Oxford houses if
anybody at the time asked recovering
individuals what they needed to stay
clean they would usually say something
like we need an affordable safe place to
live we need decent jobs so we can be
self-supporting and we need friends that
are going to support us to stay clean
and sober and so this group of addicts
in 1975 created the system called Oxford
House Oxford houses are literally rented
houses in the United States there’s
small scale communities of seven to
twelve individuals of one gender all men
are all women and they agree to three
democratic principles one everybody let
us pay their fair share they split the
rent the expenses and all the chores
they go on within the house you must
remain drug-free and alcohol-free if you
use you must leave immediately all the
decisions made within the house that
affect everyone in the house must be
made democratically there’s no
professionals living in these houses
there’s no authority living in these
houses it is only people in recovery
living in these houses but they’re very
sex successful they have over 90 percent
we’ve done studies at the universe at
DePaul University with my mentor Lenny
Jason he’s been studying Oxford houses
for over 25 years we’ve done multiple
studies with Oxford House as
collaborators and we found in randomised
trials over two years if you randomized
people into usual care or into Oxford
House after two years 90 percent of
people in Oxford House are sober were
about 45 percent of people in usual
aftercare have relapsed that’s
unbelievable
right and we think that it’s because
Oxford House people have created a
community around themselves and what
they say and what they they have a say
in their communities they have a say and
what goes on inside and nobody tells
them what to do and they have their own
rules that they follow one of the nice
things about working with the community
as collaborators is that they tell us
what we should research and one of the
things they told us is that you should
look at these social networks that
evolve within an Oxford House we think
that will give you a clue as to why
they’re effective and so we did a study
of the social networks that form within
Oxford houses and we found that this one
of the strongest predictors of staying
clean and an Oxford House is wait for it
when you make a friend in an Oxford
house and when you make a friend an
Oxford House you care
and they care for you it’s very unlikely
in individualized treatment that would
be prescribed for something for you to
do nobody’s going to write this on a
prescription pad make a friend and hand
a treat to you for you to go out and do
but because this is a naturalistic
system this is what happens we found
this to be the greatest predictor of
sobriety in an asura house so I am a
two-time Fulbright Scholar I did both of
my full rights here in Bulgaria and my
question was do you think in Oxford
House would work in Bulgaria it’s a very
different cultural context right but we
think that there nothing very special
friendship works the same everywhere
living together works the same
everywhere and so I decided to test
whether or not this model would work for
an Oxford House also in Bulgaria and
what I found is that working in a
collaborator in Bulgaria is super fun
this is me with my collaborators in
Varna that in August of last year and we
opened up the very first Oxford House in
Natalie in Bulgaria but in continental
Europe this is our opening ceremony we
have the Bulgarian colours as a
ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of the
house we worked so hard to put this
house together
we chose the furniture together we
assemble the furniture together quite
frankly I carried a lot of the furniture
in there myself because these guys were
doing something else but we put it
together and they formed a community and
unfortunately we had to close the house
down the house was not suitable for
wintertime we had to close it down this
January there are some other mistakes
that we made along the way where we’re
going to try again but the big thing
that I learned about doing international
research is this it’s the importance of
context right context is the water that
we swim in I think I borrowed this
phrase from the late David Foster
Wallace if you ask a fish what it’s like
to be a fish they’ll tell you lots of
things but they won’t tell you that
they’re wet all of the time right that
culture in context is the water that we
swim in and the thing that I learned by
doing my research in Bulgaria is it
taught me the contextual things that
make Oxford houses work in the United
States we have a system of laws we have
a culture that supports a recovery that
doesn’t exist everywhere that made me a
better community psychologist doing
international research and help help me
learn about context that I would never
have learned back in the United States
so why is this so important it’s
important because we’re becoming an
increasingly globalized world we have
data coming at us from all directions
and they affect us as individuals and
it’s very difficult to know how those
things are affecting us community
psychologists because we have this
systems approach to looking at things
can maybe help design interventions that
can maybe improve the health and
well-being of people in communities in
many different contexts beam here in
Bulgaria has taught me a lot of things
I have two collaborators two colleagues
from Vanderbilt University Doug Perkins
and Nikolai mahalo they’ve been coming
to Bulgaria and spreading the seeds of
community psychology since 2012 I taught
a short class in community psychology at
new Bulgarian University last year but
I’d like to introduce you to somebody
really special this is why the future
belongs to community research this is a
you BG’s community psychology class of
2017 this is the first full community
psychology class ever taught in Bulgaria
these are 21 students not everyone is
pictured here 21 students from 11
different countries they’re coming up
with 21 amazing and this is where I
usually get weepy that my class my class
members knows is I usually start to tear
up a little bit but they’ve come up with
21 amazing interventions in their home
communities to address things like
foster homes arts PTSD just a bullying
just amazing things and they’re going to
put this together and we’re going to
have the final exam is their proposals
and so not only does the future belong
to community research the future belongs
to international community research
because the more we learn in this
globalized community the more maybe we
can make a friend and understand each
other I thank you very much for your
attention [Applause]
star
alright so I have I’m Ron Harvey I’m an
associate professor of psychology here
at AU BG who here is a member of a
community please raise your hands
everybody here is a member of the
community your hands raise please who
here has heard or knows what community
psychology is ah
my students I see a few of them here
great I’m going to start with a very
banal but it’s very simple and powerful
truth for all members of a community
right and we affect those communities
that those communities also affect us
many people don’t live in ideal
communities maybe they live in poverty
maybe they live in oppressive systems
maybe they live in systems of injustice
and it’s not surprising then that some
of those people would develop
psychological problems anxiety
depression substance abuse but if people
go to get treatment usually they’ll be
treated as an individual they’ll be
treated only and expected to change by
themselves but that doesn’t treat the
larger systems that are maybe causing
some of these problems and so I’m a
community psychologist and I’m
interested in how these larger systems
affect health and well-being so today
I’m going to talk to you what is
community psychology give you a little
bit of
industry I’m going to give you examples
of community psychology research and I
tell you why I think the future belongs
to community psychology and tell you a
little bit about the future of community
research community psychology was
founded in the United States in the mid
1960s the civil rights movement the
women’s liberation movement the youth
movement the protests against the war in
Vietnam the founders of community
psychology were idealistic young
clinical psychologists working in urban
mental health centers and they saw
clients suffering from anxiety
depression substance abuse problems not
very different from today but because
they were young and socially aware they
knew that these people were living in
poverty were oppressed we’re living in
corrupt social systems that were at
least on paper constitutionally obliged
to treat them as full citizens and we’re
not so maybe these responses were
completely normal these founders of
community psychology said we need to get
to the root causes of what causes the
psychological problems that affect
physical and psychological health and
well-being by getting to the root causes
we can do something that maybe like
prevent problems before they start
or we can maybe enhance health and
well-being because it’s much easier to
prevent problems than to treat problems
after they’ve already arrived and so
community psychologist wants to get to
that root part of the of the problem in
order to solve it the other thing that
makes community psychology very
different from other forms of psychology
is we do not pretend to be distant
distant scientists we do not pretend to
be objective scientists we want to be
agents of social change we want to work
in the communities that we are
interested in we want to work with
community members to be our
collaborators we want them to teach us
about what is going on in their system
and what is going on in their
communities and this intuitively makes
sense who knows more about living in an
oppressive system than people living in
oppressive systems who knows more about
living with addiction than people with
addictions so community psychologists
work with people in in schools in an
improv workshop on a school board to be
actually part of the board or in rural
Kenya working with people to set up HIV
awareness programs those people tell us
how they want the programs to work and
we work with them and help them design
it with our knowledge and our expect
ease there’s another advantage to doing
this when people have a say in what goes
on in their communities they own it they
literally own it they helped design it
and when people designed their own
interventions they buy into it much
stronger and they live long after the
expert of the community psychologist has
left I don’t know about you but I don’t
like to be told what to do
most people in most places don’t like to
be told what to do but working with
people as collaborators solves that
problem we also work with lawyers
policymakers government officials
sociologists social workers clinical
psychologists anybody that affects
social change even people in government
the police anybody that has an impact on
the community why I’ve been saying
change a lot who here has tried to
change themselves it’s difficult isn’t
it I heard this quote very early in my
community psychology training if you
truly want to understand something try
to change it this is from it’s I found
three attributions for this quote what
is Kurt Lewin was an influential
twentieth-century psychologist possibly
the godfather of community psychology
Walter Dearborn who’s a student of Yuri
bronfenbrenner also an influential
community psychologist and melts eight
to
all revolutionaries but the idea is that
if you truly want to understand
something try to change it within
yourself you’ll resist but in when we’re
studying individuals in large social
systems we really want to understand
where they exist in how to change it and
the way we do that is by invoking what
we call an ecological model this is
bronfenbrenner ecological Systems Theory
you can see at the center is the
individual you me anybody that we are
talking about inside the community we
have our own biology we have our own age
we have our own genders and that is the
thing that we own immediately outside of
that we have a micro system these are
the people in places and things that
have a direct impact on us
those are our neighbors our families our
schools and so on that we interact with
on a day-to-day basis from there we have
an XO system which is the school funding
the the things that hover over all of
these systems whether or not things get
funded or not the mass media social and
welfare services and so on the outer
layer here is the largest layer it’s the
attitudes and beliefs of the culture it
is the social beliefs the cultural
context in which we live and then
there’s also a chrono system these
things evolve over time right the way
things are today is not the way they
were a hundred years ago the beliefs
that people have 100 years ago
absolutely impact us today the only
thing I would add to this model is the
planetary layer right we exist on a
planet and we are influencing the planet
as well as the planet is influencing us
and if you don’t think concerns about
global climate change is causing anxiety
depression and hopelessness that I
haven’t convinced you yet but I think
maybe I’m on my way so I’ll give you an
example of the the importance of context
and the importance of this ecological
model I study a
specifically I studied people coming out
of treatment and reintegrating back into
their community people with drug
addictions alcohol addictions and so on
so I’m going to give you a little bit of
an idea of the scale of the problem at
least in the United States this these
data are from the substance abuse and
mental health services administration
just a couple years ago so in the United
States in 2015 had twenty 1.7 million
people about 8% of the adult population
had substance abuse problems of those
only 2.3 million about 11% received
treatment so almost 90% of people who
need substance abuse treatment don’t get
it or don’t use it for whatever reason
of those 1.3 million or 2.3 million 1.3
million about 57% have been in treatment
at least once prior so what this
suggests is that there’s this revolving
door of treatment people go into
treatment they’re usually given
detoxification services and then there’s
release back into the community so if
you look at this diagram again you’ll
see treating the individual and then
putting them back in the school
neighborhood doesn’t change anything
individuals it’s very difficult for
individuals to resist the systems that
bring them into being and that caused
problems in 1975 a group of addicts
created a system called Oxford houses if
anybody at the time asked recovering
individuals what they needed to stay
clean they would usually say something
like we need an affordable safe place to
live we need decent jobs so we can be
self-supporting and we need friends that
are going to support us to stay clean
and sober and so this group of addicts
in 1975 created the system called Oxford
House Oxford houses are literally rented
houses in the United States there’s
small scale communities of seven to
twelve individuals of one gender all men
are all women and they agree to three
democratic principles one everybody let
us pay their fair share they split the
rent the expenses and all the chores
they go on within the house you must
remain drug-free and alcohol-free if you
use you must leave immediately all the
decisions made within the house that
affect everyone in the house must be
made democratically there’s no
professionals living in these houses
there’s no authority living in these
houses it is only people in recovery
living in these houses but they’re very
sex successful they have over 90 percent
we’ve done studies at the universe at
DePaul University with my mentor Lenny
Jason he’s been studying Oxford houses
for over 25 years we’ve done multiple
studies with Oxford House as
collaborators and we found in randomised
trials over two years if you randomized
people into usual care or into Oxford
House after two years 90 percent of
people in Oxford House are sober were
about 45 percent of people in usual
aftercare have relapsed that’s
unbelievable
right and we think that it’s because
Oxford House people have created a
community around themselves and what
they say and what they they have a say
in their communities they have a say and
what goes on inside and nobody tells
them what to do and they have their own
rules that they follow one of the nice
things about working with the community
as collaborators is that they tell us
what we should research and one of the
things they told us is that you should
look at these social networks that
evolve within an Oxford House we think
that will give you a clue as to why
they’re effective and so we did a study
of the social networks that form within
Oxford houses and we found that this one
of the strongest predictors of staying
clean and an Oxford House is wait for it
when you make a friend in an Oxford
house and when you make a friend an
Oxford House you care
and they care for you it’s very unlikely
in individualized treatment that would
be prescribed for something for you to
do nobody’s going to write this on a
prescription pad make a friend and hand
a treat to you for you to go out and do
but because this is a naturalistic
system this is what happens we found
this to be the greatest predictor of
sobriety in an asura house so I am a
two-time Fulbright Scholar I did both of
my full rights here in Bulgaria and my
question was do you think in Oxford
House would work in Bulgaria it’s a very
different cultural context right but we
think that there nothing very special
friendship works the same everywhere
living together works the same
everywhere and so I decided to test
whether or not this model would work for
an Oxford House also in Bulgaria and
what I found is that working in a
collaborator in Bulgaria is super fun
this is me with my collaborators in
Varna that in August of last year and we
opened up the very first Oxford House in
Natalie in Bulgaria but in continental
Europe this is our opening ceremony we
have the Bulgarian colours as a
ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of the
house we worked so hard to put this
house together
we chose the furniture together we
assemble the furniture together quite
frankly I carried a lot of the furniture
in there myself because these guys were
doing something else but we put it
together and they formed a community and
unfortunately we had to close the house
down the house was not suitable for
wintertime we had to close it down this
January there are some other mistakes
that we made along the way where we’re
going to try again but the big thing
that I learned about doing international
research is this it’s the importance of
context right context is the water that
we swim in I think I borrowed this
phrase from the late David Foster
Wallace if you ask a fish what it’s like
to be a fish they’ll tell you lots of
things but they won’t tell you that
they’re wet all of the time right that
culture in context is the water that we
swim in and the thing that I learned by
doing my research in Bulgaria is it
taught me the contextual things that
make Oxford houses work in the United
States we have a system of laws we have
a culture that supports a recovery that
doesn’t exist everywhere that made me a
better community psychologist doing
international research and help help me
learn about context that I would never
have learned back in the United States
so why is this so important it’s
important because we’re becoming an
increasingly globalized world we have
data coming at us from all directions
and they affect us as individuals and
it’s very difficult to know how those
things are affecting us community
psychologists because we have this
systems approach to looking at things
can maybe help design interventions that
can maybe improve the health and
well-being of people in communities in
many different contexts beam here in
Bulgaria has taught me a lot of things
I have two collaborators two colleagues
from Vanderbilt University Doug Perkins
and Nikolai mahalo they’ve been coming
to Bulgaria and spreading the seeds of
community psychology since 2012 I taught
a short class in community psychology at
new Bulgarian University last year but
I’d like to introduce you to somebody
really special this is why the future
belongs to community research this is a
you BG’s community psychology class of
2017 this is the first full community
psychology class ever taught in Bulgaria
these are 21 students not everyone is
pictured here 21 students from 11
different countries they’re coming up
with 21 amazing and this is where I
usually get weepy that my class my class
members knows is I usually start to tear
up a little bit but they’ve come up with
21 amazing interventions in their home
communities to address things like
foster homes arts PTSD just a bullying
just amazing things and they’re going to
put this together and we’re going to
have the final exam is their proposals
and so not only does the future belong
to community research the future belongs
to international community research
because the more we learn in this
globalized community the more maybe we
can make a friend and understand each
other I thank you very much for your
attention [Applause]
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