Treatment Goal: Recovery

Abstract

Beyond symptom remission, recovery aims at inclusion and social participation of psychiatric patients irrespective of remaining symptoms and disabilities. It thus places a focus on the patients’ individual resources and creativity, which enable them to participate in society. It also places a strong focus on social exclusion and stigmatization, may they result from passive avoidance or active exclusion of subjects with mental disorders. As such, fighting stigma includes a reflection on the role of psychiatry as a health care institution and its everyday practices. We discuss a person-centred approach in psychiatry that aims at inclusion in the life world and community and discuss several steps that facilitate recovery: reduction of coercive treatment by opening the doors of acute wards, rehabilitation via job placement, empowerment in advocacy groups as well as in the supervision of public health policy, hospital settings and treatment, and direct participation of experienced uses in therapeutic teams. With increasing globalization, we also emphasize the necessary intercultural openness of mental health care institutions and the participation of migrants both in devising health care settings as well in therapeutic teams.