Havens: Stories of True Community Healing

by Leonard A. Jason

For good reasons, Americans are growing concerned about the cost of health care and housing. There are many reasons why people need care-the addiction of a teenage child or spouse, an elderly relative in need of nursing home care, a psychological disorder, or a chronic medical condition―but even moderately successful institutional solutions for these problems are often too costly to be truly helpful. The cost of healthcare is so high it can result in homelessness. Leonard Jason and Martin Perdoux show us a relatively low-cost and effective solution growing in neighborhoods across the true community. People are moving in together to meet each other's needs and, in the process, create a much higher quality of life than they would find in an institution. People living together in these healing communities include the elderly, recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, and people suffering from mental illness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, AIDS, or Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. These communities offer them a way to recover the caring, structure, direction, and respect that a strong family can provide. The authors of this work show us how communities created out of necessity by their members constitute a more sustained, natural means to healing.

In his foreword, Thomas Moore points out that the communities described in this book are not only physical homes, but also shelters for the soul, places to find the deepest kind of security. Here you will see concrete ways imaginative leaders help those in trouble find themselves rather than become dependent on institutions. It is a new and promising imagination of how social healing not by setting up more programs, but by treating people in trouble as human beings, with certain emotional and social needs. This book teaches how to re-imagine this whole process, and now, in an increasingly technical and lonely world, we need this precious wisdom more than ever.

176 pages, Hardcover

First published June 30, 2004

About the author

Leonard A. Jason is a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, where he also directs the Center for Community Research. His chief professional interests include the study of chronic fatigue syndrome, smoking, smoking cessation, and Oxford House recovery homes for substance abuse. Jason's interest in chronic fatigue syndrome began when he was diagnosed with the condition in 1990 after having mononucleosis.

Jason is a former president of the Division of Community Psychology of the American Psychological Association (APA) and a past editor of The Community Psychologist. Jason has edited or written 23 books, and he has published 541 articles and 77 book chapters on CFS, recovery homes, the prevention of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug abuse, media interventions and program evaluation. He has served on 83 Thesis Committees (of which he chaired 57), and 70 Dissertation Committees (of which he chaired 36). He has served on the editorial boards of ten psychological journals. Jason has served on review committees of the National Institutes of Health, and he has received over $26,000,000 in federal research grants. He was also a board member and vice-president for an advocacy group called International Association of CFS/ME.

He is a member the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee. In 1999, Jason published an epidemiological study of chronic fatigue syndrome among United States adults. Jason helped organize two major American Psychological Association sponsored conferences on research methods for community psychology and recently co-edited a book on this topic.

Jason has served on the editorial boards of journals including:
-Prevention in Human Services, 1986-1995; renamed Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, 1996–present.
-Journal of Community Psychology, 1983-1986, 2007–present.
-The Journal of Primary Prevention, 1983-1986. Appointed Associate Editor, 1986-2007.
-Special Services in the Schools; renamed Journal of Applied School Psychology 1984-2008.

Jason received the 1997 Distinguished Contributions to Theory and Research Award and the 2007 Special Contribution to Public Policy award of the Society for Community Research and Action. He was presented the 1997 CFIDS Support Network ACTION Champion Award by the Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome Association of America.

He received the Dutch ME Foundation International ME Award in 2003. He has been awarded three media awards from the APA.