The shared history of addiction
and mental illness
The mental health and addiction fields share a dark past in which people
experiencing mental illnesses and/or addictions endured institutions that
offered no treatment, ineffective treatment and/or well-intentioned treatment
that did great harm. Each disorder was considered intractable; stories
of recovery rarely reached professional or public consciousness. People
living with either disorder were expected to end up in the least favorable
places in society: the gutter, prisons, asylums, or morgues.Throughout history, both systems of care have been distracted by debates about the causes and nature of the disorders, troubled by widespread prejudice and discrimination, and undermined by the criminalization of behaviors associated with these disorders. Even today, addiction and mental illness occupy a common space of disgrace in society and those suffering from these disorders are inordinately over-represented within the nation's prisons.
Examining the characteristics influencing recovery from addiction and recovery from mental illness, it is astonishing that the two fields have yet to partner to organize services under a common vision of recovery. People living with mental illnesses and/or addictions want to eliminate or manage their symptoms, increase their capacity to participate in valued relationships and roles, and embrace purpose and meaning in their lives-in other words, experience recovery. People in recovery from mental illness and/or addictions and their family members are leading the call to change the current service systems of care toward a more focused goal of long-term recovery.
The principles of a common recovery vision begin with the notion that for both disorders, recovery is a personal and individualized process of growth that unfolds along a continuum, with multiple pathways leading to recovery. First-person accounts of people in recovery from mental illness or addiction have described recovery both as a transformational process and an incremental process, and recovery stories are often filled with elements of both styles of change.
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