ABSTRACT
Community mental health is a relatively elusive and ill-defined concept. Nevertheless, mental health practitioners and researchers recognize that individuals respond to changes in their environment in a variety of ways, some involving changes in mental or emotional well-bring. To assess changes in community mental health, Francis T. Miller and his colleagues suggest a variety of indicators, including births, deaths, marriages, divorces, suicides, hospital admissions, ambulance and rescue calls, utilization of social services and mental health facilities, alcohol consumption, and crime. Utilization of social services and mental health facilities has also been suggested as an indicator of changes in community mental health. The concept of environment as a determinant of mental health employs not only the factor of stress, but "balance between stresses and satisfactions." Preliminary results of the Fairbanks Community Survey seem to support the hypothesis that many Fair banksans experienced personal satisfactions during the pipeline period at the same time that they experienced disappointment with changes in the community.
