The shared need for transformation to recovery
in addiction and mental health systems
Presently neither the mental health nor addiction treatment systems focus
on supporting long-term recovery from mental illness and/or addiction.
Neither field has acknowledged or overcome the limitations of traditional
institution-based acute care models of treatment and rehabilitation to
focus on the processes of lasting recovery. Over the past 30 years the two fields have been moving in different directions. The mental health system has been reorganized to offer support services in the community. These services have focused almost exclusively on symptom management (via medication compliance) and cost management (toward the goal of decreased hospitalization). During the same period of time the addiction field was delivering an ever-briefer model of acute care with little on-going monitoring, support and early re-intervention services and diminishing linkages to naturally occurring communities of recovery.
Guided by an alternative vision of recovery, the mental health and addiction fields could organize their services to address the often long-term and complex needs of individuals and families living with mental illness and/or addiction, including people severely disabled by co-occurring disorders. Much has been written about failures of the mental health and addiction systems to provide people with co-occurring disorders with the long-term services and supports often needed for recovery. People living with co-occurring psychiatric and addiction disorders could be well served in service systems united under a common vision of recovery.
A shared vision of recovery would compel both systems to provide outreach to engage people in a process of recovery; motivational services to help people develop readiness for change, treatment, and/or rehabilitation; and provision of on-going recovery support services to assist people to reach their recovery and broader life goals. These pre-recovery engagement, recovery initiation and recovery maintenance support services would be located in specific environments of need in communities and be provided by professionals, family members, and peers.
A unified recovery vision communicates the reality and hope of recovery, emphasizes the role responsibilities of the person in recovery and their family members, and recognizes the many pathways to healing that people with mental illnesses and/or addictions take in their recovery. This vision of recovery requires that the mental health and addiction systems work together with people in recovery as individuals and communities to develop effective services, strategies, and supports. Finally this recovery vision encourages the development of a culture of recovery that embraces multiple communities of recovery that support all people who are affected by mental illnesses and/or addiction; in other words, most of us.
