More thoughts on recovery

Recovery stands against maintenance as a way of supporting people with mental health issues. Traditionally services have been provided from a maintenance framework which believes that a person has a mental illness, they are always going to have it and you have to provide services to help them in their situation. A recovery approach says you can recover from this. There may still be symptoms and you may still have times when things aren't they way they were before, but you can recover. We are going to be there for you to help you in that journey.

Service providers that work from a maintenance framework generally focus on the organisation and ensure that its procedures are followed, a range of programmes are established and are offered to the client, and risks are kept to a minimum. A recovery focussed organisation will put the individual first, will try to find opportunities to develop as a person, rather than having to fit into specific programmes and will be prepared to take risks for the good of recovery.

How often I see the church falling into the same maintenance approach. We establish programmes and structures and people to have to fit into them. Our purpose is to reach the goals and strategies of the church and individuals have to fit into that. If people's gifts, abilities and experiences don't fit with the model, it's just too bad.

Wouldn't it be great to see church become focussed on individuals, helping people to see their God given abilities, to help them find God's dream for them, and helping them to discover opportunities to use their gifts, abilities and experiences to serve Jesus Christ.

Recovery

I'm into the second day of a workshop on the process of recovery as it relates to mental illness. There are a lot of challenges to current thinking. I'm already seeing how the principles relate to so many areas of life. Just as people with mental illness don't want to be stuck with a service provider that is simply trying to force them into some service delivery mould, but to treat them as real people who have a right to move forward into a new life, so people going to a church have the right to deserve something more than a service delivery approach to church life. I'll develop that thought sometime in the future.

I found this statement in a Queensland Government document about the Recovery model in mental health services. It fits in many circumstances: Hope is the limitless belief that things do not have to remain the same and that change can and does happen. It is about concentrating on strengths rather than weaknesses, focussing on the future rather than the past and celebrating small successes rather than insisting on rapid change. Hope fuels the recovery process through expanding the sphere of possibility, colouring life perceptions and sustaining individuals even during period of relapse.