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ATC is a professional organisation which aims to ‘reduce mental distress’ by supporting the work of therapeutic communities in various ways. It is a product of the ‘social psychiatry’ movement in the mid-20th century, and reflects the long and distinguished of ‘moral treatment’, as well as more recent turbulent times and threats to the existence of TCs.
THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITIES are complex psychological treatment programmes based on ideas of emotional attachment, collective responsibility, citizenship and empowerment. They use many different therapeutic principles - including analytic, behavioural, cognitive, systemic, creative, educational and humanistic – but all within the framework of a group-based view of the social origins and maintenance of much overwhelming distress, mental ill-health and deviant behaviour.
This site is a resource for ATC members, other TC practitioners and workers, those who are thinking about entering treatment in a TC as well as those in the midst of it or those who have left, referrers, researchers, and anybody else who might be interested in this radical and emancipatory therapeutic approach.
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