Emerging Practices in Psychiatric Rehabilitation

This special section, and ones in following issues, brings attention to the maturing area of psychiatric rehabilitation. Once a relatively small discipline which emerged following World War II, this field has mushroomed as a result of deinstitutionalization to become a core, robust component of community-based systems of care for persons with serious and prolonged psychiatric disorders. The lead article in this section provides practice guidance for engaging such persons in evidence-based psychiatric rehabilitative interventions based on a person-centered care planning process and nested within an ongoing process evaluation that ensures people receive the most appropriate services and supports over time and in line with their identified personal goals and preferences. The remaining articles offer a panoply of examples of some of the new directions being taken, such as those using digital technology, as well as of some of the newer uses of existing approaches, such as supported housing.

What all of these examples have in common is that they have succeeded in moving the goalposts of care beyond symptom reduction and maintenance of clinical stability to the restoration of functioning and, eventually, to a meaningful life in the community of the person’s choosing. The vision of recovery that guides, and is intended to result from, such supports has significantly expanded the scope and aspirations of psychiatric rehabilitation, bringing it into equal partnership with more symptom-focused approaches to produce a psychiatry for the whole person—a vision highly consistent with that of the Washington School of Psychiatry.

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Notes on contributors

Larry Davidson

Larry Davidson, PhD, is a professor affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University and director of the Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health, Yale School of Medicine, in New Haven, Connecticut.