The Theory of Recovery Psychology/The Recovery Model

The Recovery Model

• Chapter One "Recovery model versus Medical model: A Comparision and Analysis"
• Chapter Two "The Recovery Movement"
• Chapter Three "The Recovery Theory"
• Chapter Four "Recovery and Identity Politics: The Moral Development of the Mental Health System"

Imagine your car is not running correctly. You would probably take your car in to get serviced. This would cost some money, and you would be back to driving it again. But what if this car was analogous for something a little more substantially and personally connected to yourself; such as your mental well being, your identity or your life. Lets say this car of yours, had a bad starter switch, leaked oil, overheated and the gears would not shift properly. You would have a hard time with this vehicle. So you would go to professionals to get help with your problem. You would probably believe that you deserve or expect that your car would be under the best possible effective care. As a consumer of automotive service, you would feel you deserve the best customer service. So what if now, the mechanics told you that your car might make it home by getting a jump start, adding one quart of oil every tenth mile of driving, keeping an eye on the temperature gage and you’d have to be extremely careful with your driving speed since the gears do not shift correctly. The mechanic sets you up with an appointment to return next week or next month. He instructs you to use a fuel additive that your car will need indefinitely, if not for the life of your car. This fuel additive the mechanic says may have some unusual side effects, as it makes blue smoke come from your exhaust pipe. When you drive your car, attempting to cope with these problems, this blue smoke attracts the attention of patrolling police officers. You attempt to explain to these officers that the fuel additive that causes your car to exhaust blue smoke is necessary for maintenance; you do not really understand why because your mechanic has given you long winded explanatory lectures filled with mechanical mumbo jumbo that means nothing to you. Of course, you have accepted this to be true because the mechanic is an expert authority on the subject, and you’re just somebody in need of his help. All of your continued meetings with this mechanic, he only asks you about the smell, the color, and the amount of the smoke bellowing out of your exhaust and now from under the hood. He never addresses or allows you to address the oil leaks, the starter problems, the shifting of gears or the constant overheating. This continues for eight to ten years. Because mechanics come and go often, you see many different mechanics that give various different babbling lectures in mechanical gibberish, they give you various instructions on how to manage your cars problems. Sometimes they ask you to allow them to lock up your car for six weeks to four months at a time in their garage. In their garage your car collects dust and nothing is really done for its benefit, of which you can tell anyways. They tell you it is necessary to stabilize the vacuum advance unit when the counter bearing of the transmission has been re-engaged in its cycle or some other babble that you do not understand. All these different mechanics do about the same thing to “help” your car. Until one day you are fairly well upset with it all, your car has not functioned properly in so long, you have been told if and when you can drive it and how to drive it. You have not felt any freedom with your car. It is as if your car was not even worth having. You think “Wait, don’t they help people with their automotive problems here” you see all the other automobile service consumers riding the bus or walking, and really start to feel disenchanted with the automotive mechanic services. Finally a mechanic you have never met before introduces himself as a peer-support auto mechanic. Apparently he owns a car too, so he knows where you are coming from when you complain about the bad service. This peer-support mechanic who also owns a car and understands what you are going through; asks you the most absurd question; "Have you heard about the automotive repair movement?" This would probably strike you as odd because you been trying to get your car repaired for ten years, dealing with the run around three ring circuses of clown like mechanics and automotive service staff. He tells that this is typical of the mechanical model of automotive service. The what? Mechanical model of automotive service? Pretty bizarre language, you may think this guy is another idiot in the system talking mumbo jumbo again to mask his inefficiency as a mechanic. Then he tells you that the mechanical model is where you have been with your car this whole time; and there is this alternative if you have established your automotive repair readiness. Such dichotomy does in fact exist; this is true of the mental health system. There is the medical model that differs from the recovery model. Until recently, severe mental disorders were considered to be marked by lifelong deterioration. Schizophrenia was seen by the mental health profession as having a hopeless downhill course (Harding et al., 1992). At the beginning of the 20th century, Emil Kraepelin, the leading psychiatrist of the time assumed that the outcome of schizophrenia was so dismal that he named the disorder “dementia praecox,” meaning premature dementia. Negative conceptions of severe mental illness, had been perpetuated in textbooks starting with Kraepelin’s original writings and almost every textbook there after which dampened consumers’ and families’ expectations. This created the notion that having these disorders meant a person was without hope. The Medical Model The medical model proposes that it is useful to think of abnormal behavior as a disease. This point of view is the basis for many of the terms that are used to refer to abnormal behavior, including mental illness, psychological disorder, and psychopathology (pathology refers to manifestations of disease). The medical model gradually became the dominant way of thinking about abnormal behavior during the 18th and 19th centuries, and its influence remains strong today. The medical model clearly represented progress over earlier models of abnormal behavior. Prior to the 18th century, most conceptions of abnormal behavior were based on superstition. People who behaved strangely were assessed by a then supernatural model and thought to be possessed by demons, witches in league with the devil, or victims of God’s wrath. Their disorders were treated with chants, rituals, exorcisms, and such. If their behavior was seen as threatening, they were candidates for chains, dungeons, torture, and death. The rise of the medical model brought great improvements in the treatment of people who exhibited abnormal behavior. As victims of an illness, they were viewed with sympathy rather than hatred and fear. Although living conditions in early asylums were often deplorable, there was gradual progress toward more humane care of the mentally ill. It took time, but ineffectual approaches to treatment eventually gave way to scientific investigation of the causes and cures of psychological disorders.