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Part II:
Status of Research-Based Programs

A General Approach Applied in Different Settings

Health Realization/Psychology of Mind

Dr. Roger Mills and Associates, Long Beach, California

Health Realization programs, which have been widely applied in clinical, educational, and community settings, are based on the resiliency or strengths-based paradigm known as Psychology of Mind (POM). Community psychologist Dr. Roger Mills and his colleagues began developing POM some 20 years ago in response to their recognition that existing paradigms were inadequate to address the multitude of personal and societal problems of their clients and the world they lived in.

POM proceeds from three assumptions about the basic nature of human psychological functioning:

• Thought is the source of human experience.
• Regardless of their current state of mental functioning, all people have the same innate capacity for healthy psychological functioning.
• There are two modes of thought, one related to memory and the other to healthy, common-sense, wiser intelligence (Mills, 1995; Pransky et al., 1997).

POM differs from cognitive therapy in that the latter proceeds from the premise that problems result from irrational beliefs, and that it is the content of thoughts that is at fault. POM, in contrast, focuses on the process of thought-that is, how we think. It is the quality of our thinking, not the content, that determines our stability. By coming to understand the process of our thinking, we can achieve an adaptive distancing from problems and can find healthy, hopeful, common sense approaches to dealing with those problems. Pransky et al. (1997) provide the comparison of cognitive and POM approaches shown in Table 5.

Table 5. Comparison of Cognitive Therapy and Psychology of Mind

Source: Pransky, G.S., Mills, R.C., Sedgeman, J.A., & Blevens, K. (1997). An emerging paradigm for brief treatment and prevention. In Vandecreek, L., Knapp, S., & Jackson, T.L., Eds., Innovations in Clinical Practice: A Source Book, Vol. 15. Professional Resource Press: Sarasota, FL.

Mills and his colleagues call POM an educational process, and they provide training in a specific skill. However, they do so via the community psychology model of enlisting the interest and support of concerned and influential people in the community and by providing a facilitating environment staffed by exceedingly well-trained and supervised "teachers." Benard (1994b) notes that the Health Realization helper "sees all people as 'doing the best they can, given how things appear to them,' listens with compassion and without blame, and welcomes clients' active participation and ownership, being merely a guide and a coach in their quest to access their innate wisdom" (p. 2). She further notes that, while a number of traits of resilience are fostered throughout this process, the emergence of a strong sense of self-efficacy, social competence, problem-solving abilities, autonomy, and a sense of a bright future among previously "disempowered" people are especially noteworthy.

The Health Realization model has been applied in a variety of settings-with psychiatric inpatients and outpatients, in drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs, in schools, and in prisons. But perhaps nowhere are the data so compelling as in Mills's work in communities, especially in "hopeless" housing projects in urban areas such as Miami, the South Bronx, Minneapolis, and Oakland. After three years, results of the Health Realization project, which served 150 families and 650 youth in the Modello and Homestead Gardens Housing Projects in Miami, were as shown in Table 6.

Table 6. Results of the Health Realization Project in the Modello and Homestead Gardens Housing Projects

Source: Mills, R. (1997a). Psychology of Mind-Health Realization: Summary of clinical, prevention, and community empowerment applications documented outcomes. Unpublished paper.

Mills, R. (1997b). Comprehensive Health Realization community empowerment projects: List of completed and current projects. Unpublished paper.

Similarly, for Coliseum Gardens, a 200-unit public housing project that had the highest rates of homicide and drug-related arrests in the city of Oakland, California, Mills reports the following results for the Health Realization program:

• Homicides dropped by 100% (none reported in years 2).
• Violent crime was reduced by 45%.
• Drug possession/sales decreased by 16%.
• Assault with firearms was reduced by 38%.
• Youth attendance and involvement in Boys and Girls Clubs increased by 110%.
• Gang warfare and ethnic clashes between Cambodian and African American youth ceased.
• 62 families have members gainfully employed.
• 80% of residents participated in regular meetings with housing management and community police.
• 45 residents regularly participated in weekly empowerment classes (Mills, 1997a, 1997b).

While these and other data are impressive, Mills notes the need for a more rigorous evaluation process for the various Health Realization programs.

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