Engaging clients, families, and communities as partners in mental health

Counselors are being called on to reach beyond the office and clinic to partner with clients, their families, and communities to address mental health and social problems. Counselors need models of collaboration that guide them in building transformative client-family-community partnerships. W. J. Doherty and T. J. Mendenhall (2006) presented a model of community-based collaboration in their article Citizen Health Care: A Model for Engaging Patients, Families, and Communities as Co-Producers of Health. After reviewing their article, an analysis of a university-community partnership is used to frame the discussion of the model's implications for counselors and counselor education programs.