The structure and technique of community meetings: the short-term unit

Most psychiatric inpatient units call themselves therapeutic communities and hold community meetings where patients and staff meet for a specified period of time (Clark 1977; Joint Commission on Mental illness and Health 1961; Jones et al. 1953; Moline 1976; Wessen 1964). On short-term units which receive a wide spectrum of patients, including involuntary, acutely disturbed and demented patients, the structure and techniques used in running community meetings must be altered from the ways initially described by Jones et al. Certain patients do not function well if the more traditional, less structured model is followed. We will describe specific structural and technical parameters which permit the accommodation of the community meeting to the needs of these patients and result in fewer "failures." These parameters are in part based on the experimental studies by Abramczuk (1972), Daniels and Rubin (1968), and Rubin (1979), who demonstrated the need for more structure. We will describe a typical community meeting on a short-term unit, discussing recurrent themes and patient government.