Mental illness: community intervention on the way of recovery

Abstract

In Portugal, there have been major efforts to enhance policies to progressively take over caregiving in psychiatric hospitals for more extensive and integrated care in the health system. Having as a reference the tacit values in National Mental Health Plan - 2007-2016 and the importance of continued and integrated care in mental health, recovery of patients with mental illness becomes a strong object of study in this area of intervention. The recovery is a goal of mental health care, and the scientific community has been implementing actions in this direction, in particular based on intervention programs which, in general, result in positive effects. Being the clinical recovery oriented to follow common guidelines to several people, personal recovery is directed to the person with whom exists interaction, disposing of the individual mechanisms that he/she is able to use to become involved and adjusted to the achievement of life goals. In this perspective, mental health services should be designed to promote personal recovery, what means that can not exist single models, while respecting the subjectivity of the phenomenon. To do so, the understanding of that subjectivity becomes an important clinical skill inherent to the mental health intervention. Empirical evidence suggests that community intervention programs towards recovery, empowerment, quality of life and well-being, consciousness of happiness, hope and self perception of benefit, among other variables, have the potential to promote the patient’s recovery. Aims: 1) Evaluate the needs of the person with mental illness after hospital discharge; 2) Develop an intervention program to implement with patients that present mental illness, directed to individual needs, establishing as a purpose the recovery (clinical and personal); 3) Approach the caregiving through a close community service (home care); 4) Develop a Recovery Intervention Guide for People with Mental Illness; 5) Evaluate the impact of an individualized intervention program on recovery process. Design: Action research methodology, based on community intervention policies, particularly in the patient’s home, and also aims to study solutions regarding the recovery of people with mental illness. It is proposed a close intervention which includes a specialized and individualized program, aiming to develop an application named Recovery Intervention Guide for People with Mental Illness. The project includes different stages of implementation and corresponding actions. The project stages are sequential and interdependent, and require the enhancement of synergies, cooperation and effective coordination between the researchers of the institutions involved.