A JOURNEY TOWARD RECOVERY

A Journey toward Recovery: From the Inside Out

A Journey toward Recovery: From the Inside Out

Introduction

Alfred has worked in the field of mental health for about 20 years. Alfred can talk about this part of my life easily. Alfred has also been a survivor of a long-term psychiatric disability for most of my childhood and adult life, and Alfred is a survivor of the mental health system, both public and private. This is the harder part of my life to talk about. Alfred has walked on both sides of the fence, so to speak. Alfred want to share with you my own personal path toward recovery and what Alfred see as a consumer/practitioner to be necessary to support the recovery process of people who use the mental health system. First, a word about language. There is no clear consensus within either the professional mental health community or among the people who have actually experienced psychiatric treatment as to what we are to be called. In the 1970s, when people who were former “patients” started to come together and share their experiences, they called themselves just that—ex-patients or former patients.

The biomedical model of health looks at individual physical functioning and describes bad health and illness as the presence of disease and symptoms of illness as a result of physical causes such as injury or infections. It does not take into account social and psychological factors. It is dominated by considerations of genetically determined disease and biological status, and susceptibility or resistance to trauma and disease. The social model of health looks at how society and our environment affect our everyday health and well-being, and includes factors such as social class, occupation, education, income and poverty, poor housing, poor diet, and pollution.

Discussion

In California, the term “client” came to be used, because it met the dual goals of neutrality and descriptiveness. And in the 1980s the term “consumer” began to be used, mostly by the mental health system and by family groups (usually groups of parents who had an adult child with a severe psychiatric disability) in an attempt to find a label which was nonstigmatizing, yet acceptable to them. Other people who have been through the mental health system and consider themselves in recovery may use the phrase “psychiatric survivors.” This debate over language is more than semantics. What people choose to call themselves is a key element in forming a group identity.

The focus of these models is principally to explain why health inequalities exist and persist. The key cultural explanation places emphasis upon pathological (i.e. personal/individual) consequences of behaviour such as poor diet, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, drug addiction, sexual practices or lack of exercise.

Alfred was very anxious. Alfred had multiple physical problems, nightmares, and trouble sleeping. As an adult, Alfred have always been restricted in performing many of life's everyday functions—going to a shopping mall or to the bank, taking vacations or doing other leisure activities, going to social events like weddings, and working ...