Social work’s approach to recovery in mental health and addiction policies: a scoping review

ABSTRACT

A recovery paradigm has been increasingly used recently to inform mental health and addiction policies with principles that promote autonomy, social capital, and inclusion. However, some policies such as coercive treatments conflict with recovery principles and social workers report challenges implementing recovery principles in practice. This scoping review explored the literature on recovery policies in mental health and addictions from a social work perspective (N = 29). Our results showed a need to strengthen training for social workers on recovery, increase the focus on policies for addiction recovery, reduce coercive treatment policies, support families, and reduce stigma and discrimination through equitable policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy
• recovery
• mental health
• addiction
• social work
• scoping review

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This scoping review was supported in part by a 2019–2020 Royal Bank of Canada Graduate Fellowship in Applied Social Work Research, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.