Rehabilitation is a whole system approach to recovery from mental ill health that maximises an individual's quality of life and social inclusion by encouraging their skills, promoting independence and autonomy in order to give them hope for the future, and that leads to successful community living through appropriate support (Killapsy etal. 2005). The service-user groups are individuals with severe and enduring mental illness and related disabilities associated with relapsing episodes of mental health illness. Rehabilitation interventions aim to enable and support individuals with enduring mental health problems to progress towards a greater level of independent community living. This book provides a very accessible, practical and user-friendly guide on how to deliver psychosocial rehabilitation interventions, which are recovery oriented and evidence based, utilising therapeutic interventions and peer support along with family/carer support approaches.
The authors are a number of multidiscipline mental health professionals with backgrounds in mental health nursing, psychology and occupational therapy, and although they are mainly based in Australia, they have an international reputation in academic and clinical mental health services. The book is divided into five parts including sections on assessment tools, therapeutic skills and interventions, reconnecting to the community, peer support and self-help. The authors illustrate how to carry out a comprehensive assessment of needs, with examples of structured assessment tools. The assessment process also includes assessment of recovery, empowerment and strengths. The authors have identified a number of measures that may be useful to the reader and may support service users in setting their goals and planning their rehabilitation programmes.
Examples of case studies are used throughout the book, which help to illustrate the various rehabilitation interventions and evaluation processes in practice. The authors highlight that an important aspect of any rehabilitative process is evaluation of service standards and outcomes that can be used to benchmark rehabilitation services in relation to best practice within an individual service or similar groups of services. They give practical descriptions of approaches used in evaluating rehabilitation programmes, which are very useful for the reader.
This book would be a useful resource and guide for any mental health professional or trainee, particularly working in the area of general adult and rehabilitation psychiatry. The manual could also be utilised to support education and training for those mental health practitioners working in the speciality of rehabilitation psychiatry.
