4/ Editorial introductions

Amid expectations that we should form power-sharing relationships with clients in which we have the humility to look to them for expertise, and while experiencing pressure from management to ration care and prove cost-efficient performance, as mental health professionals we also often have to operate within reorganisation and dramatic local disruption to our services. Just as crises within families and individuals may be opportunities for development and growth, so too within a profession. In chapter nineteen Steve Melluish describes how both as an individual and as a member of a team, it has been possible to capitalise on such changes. In developing a departmental approach based on 'community psychology', however, certain questions arise. For example, what is the interface between psychology and politics? Is it right (or indeed really possible) for mental health care to move into the sphere of political action? Steve considers the extent to which primary prevention in mental health work and social action to target at-risk groups can effect change. Steve challenges the notion of empowerment and questions whether it is possible to effect any real change even within the context of the most 'empowering' client:professional relationship. He suggests that social action, professionally facilitated or led, may lead only to more confusion. It may be the most that can be expected of professionals in this field is for them to attempt to demystify psychological problems. That is, they can help to refocus both clients' and society's attention on the origins of these problems within people's social environments.