Therapeutic community

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Therapeutic community is a term applied to a participative, group-based approach to long-term mental illness that includes group psychotherapy as well as practical activities, and which may or may not be residential with the clients and therapists living together.

The term may have first been used in the 1940s by Harry Stack Sullivan, but the modern community was pioneered by R. D. Laing and the Philadelphia Association, David Cooper and Villa 21 and Joshua Bierer, and gained some reputation for success in rehabilitation and patient satisfaction in Britain and abroad. The availability of the treatment on the National Health Service appears to be dwindling because of changes in funding systems.