European network of community psychology

Toward a Critical Community Psychological Perspective on Unemployment and Mental Health Research

“…For elaborations of these claims see Arn, Stieger, Lobnig, Guschelbauer, and Fryer (1998); Dalton, Elias and Wandersman (2001) for the USA, Orford (1992) for the UK, Seedat (2001) for South Africa, and Thomas and Veno (1996) for Australia and New Zealand.…”

“…However the orthodox research literature has tended to focus very much on the diminishment by unemployment of people's scope and humanity and on personal and collective needs, deficits and incompetence rather than on personal and collective resources, strengths and competencies. Where there has been a effort to reduce or prevent distress it tends to have been based on the premise that the way to reduce or prevent the psychological costs of unemployment is to reduce or prevent unemployment and the way to do this is to bring about intrapsychic change in the individuals who are or might be unemployed (Fryer, 1998(Fryer, , 1999b.…”

“…Orthodox unemployment research has tended to use research methods that merely document psychological distress and ill-health, minimize the relationship between researcher and participant as a source of data pollution, minimize the extent of participant control of the research process, exclude participants' interests in research outcomes as a legitimate part of the research design, minimize researchers' commitment to the political process of change, and position research participants as answerers of researchers' questions. However, as community psychologists, we decided to try to develop and use research methods that in themselves reduce distress and ill-health, maximise the relationship between researcher and participant as a source of "data enrichment"; maximize the extent of participant control of the research process, include participants' interests in the research outcomes as part of the research design, maximize researcher commitment to the political process of change and repositions researchers as answerers of participants' questions (Fryer, 1998).…”