by JennyWeinstein (Author)
As the momentum for personalisation and recovery approaches grows, service users are increasingly participating as partners in all aspects of health and social care delivery, policy-making and professional training. This book provides an overview of service user involvement in mental health, its origins and current practice and policy. Written cooperatively by service users and academics, this book conveys a vital connection between recovery and involvement, offering a framework of values and helpful strategies to promote meaningful user participation. By sharing their personal narratives and contributing their views, service user authors demonstrate how taking control of their own care facilitates a swifter and more satisfying recovery. The book further acknowledges the bilateral value of user involvement in the development of mental health services, student learning, collaborative research and challenging social stigma, providing examples and critical appraisal of how this is currently being implemented. With a strong, positive emphasis on the benefits to all stakeholders, Service User Involvement and Recovery in Mental Health offers guidelines for good practice that will be relevant to health and social care practitioners, service users, students, researchers and educators.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 15 Dec 2009
ISBN 10: 1843106884
ISBN 13: 9781843106883
Book Overview: An overview of service user involvement in mental health, its origins and current practice and policy
Jenny Weinstein has conscientiously assembled individual and collective consumer ideas about personal recovery and how to deploy them for culture change in mental health delivery systems. It is enlightening and instructive. Chapter authors describe universals of social stigma, as well as more specific problems with practitioner behaviour. A sense of transcendence is eloquently described, and sometimes movingly so, as the authors relate their odysseys. First-person accounts transfigure info illustrations of how fostering systems change can also advance personal recovery. Repeatedly, the role of educator of professionals emerges in this regard. For instance, there is an excellent chapter that describes student workshops based on common Practice Dilemmas. They are facilitated by a team of consumers and address a pedagogical need to be challenging yet supportive and nonjudgmental in professional re-education... Regardless, this fast-reading book is valuable to understand how personal experiences affect recovery and advocacy. As grounding to educate a new generation of practitioners, I recommend it to trainees and faculty. For the rest of us, clinicians and administrators alike, it is part of the wake-up call.'
Psychiatric Services, A Journal of the American Psychiatric Association
`This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand some of the benefits, complexities and est ways to facilitate service user involvement. Covering involvement in advocacy, education, planning services, anti-discrimination campaigns, research and caring for ourselves, it gives examples of successful projects where service users have been involved.`
-- mental health today