Task force report: the social climate of mental health.

This paper focuses on the contributions the field of social ecology can make to understanding and assessing the social environment, with special reference to the prevention of mental illness. Intervention in the social environment for mental illness prevention calls for an adequate concept of the environmental effects of mental health; a classification method for measuring and comparing different environments; a knowledge of the relationships between environmental variables and behavioral or psychological outcomes; and a way of determining the most effective interventions.