The Social Nature of Recovery: Discussion and Implications for Practice

From struggling to survive to a life based on values and choices: first-person experiences of participating in a Norwegian Housing First project

“…According to the findings, the descriptions of the availability of the providers may also reflect services that 'do more than' or 'do something different from' traditional services, something that Mezzina et al (2006) and Denhov and Topor (2012) have noted as important factors in recovery. Staff who are warm and committed are also in line with the HF principles.…”

“…Acquiring a home of your own is reported both to be of vital importance for persons with mental-health and addiction problems (Andvig et al, 2013;Mezzina et al, 2006;Padgett, 2007) and to have a positive influence on recovery processes (Borg et al 2005). A randomized controlled trial (Patterson et al, 2013) has found that participants in HF programmes reported significantly greater overall quality of life compared with clients in conventional treatment programmes.…”

Da cidadania à realização de projetos de vida: inclusão social de usuários de um Centro de Atenção Psicossocial na vida cotidiana

“…Nesse contexto, a sensação de ter a sua própria casa é fundamental para se desenvolver o senso de uma vida cotidiana "normal" (MEZZINA et al, 2006b). …”

Autism, “Recovery (to Normalcy),” and the Politics of Hope

“…This focus on the social contexts of recovery is not in place of a focus on symptom reduction but is the undeniable and central context within which one's efforts toward symptom reduction are couched. Thus, according to Mezzina et al (2006): Recovery, therefore, has also to do-in addition to symptom reduction and illness management-with restitution of the person's rights to citizenship, including the right to social inclusion. As a result, the recovery process cannot take place outside of or apart from the social contexts in which the person lives, especially as one of its main aims is to restore to the person the possibility of accessing those normal social settings from which he or she has been extruded by virtue of his or her illness and/or societal stigma.…”

“…Exclusion could have been due, in part, to experiences of autism symptoms that might have presented barriers to active participation (e.g., significant communication impairments) and/or to opportunities for such participation being limited because of the cultural stigma associated with being an autistic individual (e.g., being placed in a segregated autism program in school rather than having had access to inclusive academic schooling, due to the autism label). Significantly, Mezzina et al (2006) noted, Certainly it has been the case for much of the past two hundred years that we have practiced as if recovery was a precondition of citizenship, in that people had to show improvement prior to being released from the hospital, returning to work, living independently, etc. (Davidson et al, 2001).…”