Risk Assessment & Management
(including the need for extended residential or inpatient care)

Essential, if at times overlooked, components of care, competent risk assessment and management are crucial to ensuring the success of all other components of a recovery-oriented system. Untreated addictions and psychiatric disorders, particularly in combination, increase a person's risk for harm, both to him/herself and to others. At the same time, stigma remains the number one barrier to recovery. Rare but tragic instances in which someone with a behavioral health disorder takes his or her own life or violates others perpetuate or even magnify the stigma associated with these conditions. As a result, for recovery-oriented care to promote community inclusion the risk associated with addiction and/or psychiatric disorder needs to be assessed and managed in a timely and responsive manner.

 

At times, management of risk will require placement in a secure and supervised setting, such as extended residential treatment or inpatient care. In a recovery-oriented system, these more restrictive (and costly) settings should only be used in such cases when the risk a person poses, either to self or others, outweighs his or her rights to participation in community life. Likely the number of people requiring this level of care at any given time will be a much smaller number than the number of individuals living with, and managing, behavioral health conditions in the community. 

Table of Common Characteristics