Community Psychology and Routes to Psychological Wellness

Abstract

(from the chapter) The purpose of this chapter is to develop and illustrate the concept of "routes to psychological wellness" which, the author believes, has much orienting value in framing fruitful questions for psychologists and others to pose and fruitful activities for psychologists and others to undertake. The concept of routes to psychological wellness is broader and more integrative than the phenomena of interest that have occupied the mental health fields and the emergent field of community psychology. At the same time there are domains of overlap between its issues and the focal issues of those 2 fields. The concept is sufficiently comprehensive to enfold other concepts, such as primary prevention, empowerment, competence, and heightened resilience in children, that have themselves been advanced either as significant orienting concepts or as the phenomena of interest for community psychology. Although the chapter's primary focus is neither on mental health nor community psychology, the concept of routes to psychological wellness is best developed by considering some of its historical antecedents in those fields. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).