Therapeutic environments
From PETT-Wiki
"....in which all the resources of a thoughtfully created environment, the shared living experience, and above all the enormous healing potential of relationships, are brought together for therapeutic ends..."
Society has created a variety of institutions - penal, educational and medical - to cater for people with complex psychological difficulties. But it is not generally realised that one of the most powerful therapeutic (or anti-therapeutic) influences in any group setting lies in the quality of relations and interactions within the institution itself. The sad thing is that many very well-intentioned places, by ignoring the effects of the social environment, can actually do more harm than good
The Study of Social Environments
PETT was set up to further the study of social environments, and how they can obstruct or enhance the task of helping people recover from early damaging experiences. Approaches which set out to create planned therapeutic environments are known under a variety of names, "therapeutic communities" being perhaps the best known.
Therapeutic communities for both children and adults have a record of success both in the UK and abroad. Our task is to make this approach much more widely appreciated and practised.
