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Involving communities in meeting the drug problem
An Account in Summary of a Three-Year Effort by the Community Services Division of Eagleville Hospital & Rehabilitation Center in a Large County of Eastern Pennsylvania to Assist Communities in Understanding the Nature of the Drug Problem and Mounting Efforts to Combat It.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Extract
An account in Summary of a Three-Year Effort by the Community Services Division of Eagleville Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in a Large County of Eastern Pennsylvania to Assist Communities in Understanding the Nature of the Drug Problem and Mounting Efforts to Combat It.
In February, 1969, Eagleville Hospital, a rehabilitation center that treats alcoholics and addicts together, was awarded a staffing grant by the National Institute of Mental Health for the development of a program of treatment and prevention of addiction in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the third largest county in the State, with a population of 700,000. The responsibility for the development of the prevention program was assigned by Eagleville to its education and consultation service.
Information
- Type
- IV. - Information - Education - Prevention
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1972 International Society for Criminology
Footnotes
(1)
Supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health, Staffing Grant 1 H19 MH17831-03.
References
(2) In the northeast, the county is largely upper-middle class and in some cases rich. The middle portion of the county is primarily industrial, containing a number of small urban centers, populated in the main by blue-collar workers of Italian extraction and including as well a large black minority. The western part of the county is largely rural, with a small industrial town at its outer edge. Its population is composed of successful farmers, rural poor, small town dwellers and middle-class suburbanites with a sprinkling of blacks.
(3) Elements of this misunderstanding between the generations were present in a more diluted form in our own staff. Our young staff tended to be more trusting, less up tight on things like dress, hair, sex, etc. Older staff members tended to be more conservative, more sensitive to the dangers of experimentation of all kings; drugs, and sex in particular. At times, real battles between the two groups took place around these differences. But in the end, these conflicts helped us all. This rubbing up against each other, and the give and take that it provoked, helped us to understand the difficulties the two generations were having relating to each other on the outside.
In this connection, we have not restricted the concept of a heterogeneous staff with conflicting life-styles to age categories alone. We consciously have assembled a staff that includes blue-collar and white-collar, professionals and so-called non-credentialed, addicts and non-addicts, black and white, men and women, law enforcer (we have a former police captain on the staff) and psychologist The purpose of this rainbow-hued staff, at least by ideology and background, is not only to increase the Division's ability to relate to specialized groups, but to interact mutually in a way that will help all to group in understanding and acceptance of other views, other life-styles, other values.
(4) The groups had some unusual names. « Jocks » : athletes; « Long hairs » hippies; « Greasers » : motorcycle enthusiasts; and best of all « Astronauts »; students who did nothing in school but occupy space.
(*) See attached overview of the survey results.
(**) Attached are excerpts of a report on a special, informal working relationship we have had with one State Parole Officer.