PSYC 3309 at MSVU

Share your insight with us!
One of my passions is working to create safer communities. In my roles teaching and practicing community psychology, I often come across problematic issues that have not yet reached the full awareness of the communities that are impacted by them. Gambling harm is one of these. The gambling industry (including our government) would like us to blame this on “problem gamblers” rather than acknowledging that they are creating “gambling problems” for all of us at all levels of our community, as the graphic here describes.

We are asking you, particularly anyone whose work intersects with the impacts of gambling (first responders, teachers, sports coaches, therapists, community policing, counselors, business professionals, health practitioners, etc.) to share your insights and experiences with the repercussions of gambling as we compile stories to include in a document to share with leaders and influencers across the province, in hope that changes will be made to alleviate the harms.

Please visit the GRINS website and let your voice be heard (anonymously if you prefer).

https://gamblingriskinformednovascotia.ca/survey-on-impacts-of-gambling-on-nova-scotia-communities

Bruce Dienes, Chair, GRINS.

* Thanks to Eric Hutt for the graphic!

Here's a great history and analysis of the meme in the header image;

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How free are nonprofits to follow their mission?

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Some thoughts on education from Doris Lessing:

Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: "You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself -- educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society."

"Many times when we help we do not really serve. Serving is also different from fixing. One of the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement, Abraham Maslow, said, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment of life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. Fixers trust their own expertise. When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time."
- Rachel Remen

Want your career to have a positive impact on the world? Check out this career advice website:

80,000 Hours: How to make a difference with your career You have 80,000 hours in your career. How can you best use them to help solve the world’s most pressing problems?

Is this a Community Psychology approach to healing?

The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement Shawn Ginwright Ph.D.

Understanding the difference between self-help and mutual aid.

Why Self-Help is (Mostly) Self-Destructive BS Marx Would Have Called it the Literature of False Consciousness. And He’d Have Been Right.