ABSTRACT
Sheldon J. Korchin named the first chapter of community psychology ‘The Third Mental Health Revolution’ (1976). The field of community mental health or community psychology is said to be as radical a change in perspective on human dysfunction and its alleviation as was wrought in earlier times by Pinel, when he struck the chains from the insane, and by Freud, when he showed that neuroses are psychologically determined and curable through therapeutic conversations. As a consequence of the first revolution, the mentally disturbed emerged as sick people worthy of humane concern. From the second, their conditions were conceived as psychologically determined and psychologically treatable. The thrust of the third mental health revolution lies in the quest for prevention of emotional disorders through social and community interventions aimed at their social determinants (Korchin 1976; Bellak 1964; Hobbs 1964).
