Best Practices: Recovery Centers for People With a Mental Illness: an Emerging Best Practice?

Abstract

The authors report a process evaluation that used rigorous qualitative methods consistent with best practice to assess the development and impact of a nascent recovery center in the New York City area. The center successfully delivered services that focused on helping increasing numbers of consumers achieve educational and functional improvements. Consumers perceived the center as providing a strong sense of community while also serving as a "stepping stone" to wider opportunities. Because they offer a feasible and popular means to help individuals with mental illness acquire skills, recovery centers may be an emerging best practice. Further research is necessary to test their efficacy.

A Critical Examination of “Morality” in an Age of Evidence-Based Psychiatry

“…For many cultures and subcultures throughout the world, mental illness is attributed to character flaws, sin, or a consequence of spirit possession (Kirmayer 2004;Littlewood 1991;Whitley 2012). Likewise, before psychiatry's emergence as a distinct medical discipline (in the west) in the nineteenth century, mental illness was often attributed to some moral failing on the part of the afflicted.…”

“…In recent times, researchers have become interested in the relationship between religion, spirituality and mental health, making way for a broader examination of morality. Many have written extensively on what seems to be a ''growing rapprochement'' between religion and psychiatry, particularly insofar as this integration can promote recovery from mental illness (Koenig 2008;Cook et al 2009;Whitley 2012). Given that one of the defining features of religion is a moral code that imparts what are considered objective moral truths (for example, a demarcation between right and wrong), morality Cult Med Psychiatry might also be making a comeback.…”

“…From a pragmatic standpoint, many clinicians see the value in harnessing moral resources which are already in place, such as a religious community, which imparts moral behaviors such as abstaining from alcohol (Kleinman 2006;Whitley 2012). As many researchers are now exploring, it may not be actual religious beliefs and practices, themselves, which are therapeutic, but the sense of moral strength that one draws from them.…”

“…The coinciding publication of our respective studies on consumer-run mental health centers in the same issue of Psychiatric Services (Lewis et al 2012;Whitley and Siantz 2012) sparked our exploration of morality in mental health. The aims of these studies were to investigate what is distinctive about peer-run services, how they promote recovery (Lewis et al 2012), and to employ best practice principles to assess the development and impact of a nascent recovery center (Whitley and Siantz 2012).…”

“…The aims of these studies were to investigate what is distinctive about peer-run services, how they promote recovery (Lewis et al 2012), and to employ best practice principles to assess the development and impact of a nascent recovery center (Whitley and Siantz 2012). Both these studies proceeded independently from the other, and we were unaware of the other's study until publication.…”