Saturday, February 3, 2007

LESSON 1 The Recovery Model

he mental health field in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution. Former patients and other advocates are working with mental health providers and government agencies to incorporate spirituality into mental health care. While the significance of spirituality in substance abuse treatment has been acknowledged for many years due to widespread recognition of the therapeutic value of 12-step programs, this is a new development in the treatment of serious mental disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The incorporation of spirituality into recovery is one of four hallmarks of the recovery model that is becoming increasingly accepted as the reigning treatment approach in the mental health field.

A second perspective that distinguishes the recovery model from prior approaches is the assumption that people can fully recover from even the most severe forms of mental disorders. It creates an orientation of hope rather than the "kiss of death" that diagnoses like schizophrenia once held. One hundred years ago, Emil Kraepelin,MD, identified the disorder now known as schizophrenia. He described it as dementia praecox, a chronic, unremitting, gradually deteriorating condition, having a progressive downhill course with an end state of dementia and incompetence.

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