Promoting Recovery: Recommendations for Psychiatrists
Community psychiatrists who convened in Philadelphia last year at the Pennsylvania Consensus Conference were charged with identifying barriers they experienced in promoting recovery in their patients (see “Original article: Two-Way Street Crucial to Fostering Recovery”). But for each barrier they identified, they also had at least one recommendation for psychiatrists and others involved in the public mental health system on ways to overcome those barriers and help patients lead more meaningful lives. The following are a summary of those recommendations:
Establish more standardized training on the principles of recovery for medical students, residents, and practicing psychiatrists. | |||||
Expose psychiatry residents and practicing psychiatrists more consistently to patients who have achieved recovery. | |||||
Redefine the role of community psychiatrists to emphasize their importance in supporting recovery to ensure that they have more time to spend with patients working on recovery issues and reintegrating them into the community. | |||||
Contribute to the development of best-practice guidelines that describe a range of approaches that support recovery goals. | |||||
Specify recovery-oriented outcomes within federal, state, and local mental health systems to ensure that psychiatrists focus on practical recovery-oriented goals. | |||||
Continue to establish partnerships with consumer mental health advocates and groups to further policies that support recovery-oriented systems of care. | |||||
Transform the public mental health system to emphasize recovery and principles of integrated community care. | |||||
Advocate for increased funding for a wide range of services in community settings for people with serious mental illness. | |||||
Lead community education campaigns to highlight the discrimination and stigma encountered by those with serious mental illness. | |||||
Advocate for elimination of discriminatory policies such as zoning exclusions and custody arrangements that penalize people with mental illness and for increased public funding for services that help to eliminate stigma-based policies. | |||||
