Mental health articles

principles of the recovery model The Family Recovery Model
The potential for understanding and supporting mothers is optimized when seen through the family lens. An ecological model of family recovery, therefore, lays out the relationships between parent and child characteristics, the family and the environment, and the interactions and transactions among them to suggest targets and pathways for recovery .Outcomes are optimized when mothers and children are functioning as well as possible, their interactions are
as positive as possible, and they have access to and benefit from resources and supports available outside the home (i.e., formal treatment and rehabilitation, relevant benefits and entitlements, informal resources like friends and family).
Intervention targets suggested in the family recovery model include the mother’s current functioning, her child’s current functioning, their interactions, and their environmental resources and supports .The family provides a context and motherhood provides the opportunities for
supporting or undermining recovery. Examples from conversations with mothers are readily tied to key elements of recovery):
• Hope and the expectation of better things in the future: “They [her children] gave me the best. They give me love. I want to be ok for me and for them. . .they affected me positively.”
• A sense of agency or competence: “having children. . .I’ve learned a lot. I have a lot of confidence in my abilities.”
• Self-determination, and the opportunity to set goals and make choices: “I’ve learned my limits, I can establish boundaries. I can forgive myself for being human and for having the illness, and try to teach them [her children], educate them on mental illness, in those teachable moments.” Or “My favorite thing in taking care of myself is to look at a day and have no plans, and just walk through it, you know. If I want to go somewhere, I go somewhere. If I want to stay in my pajamas, I stay in my pajamas.”
• Meaning and purpose: “Before I had a child I was a binge drinker, a drug taker, and a risk taker. . .in abusive relationships. When I became pregnant, everything I did stopped. She [her daughter] pretty much saved my life. Because I’d be in a gutter somewhere. . .if I hadn’t had my child.”
• Awareness and potentiality, and the belief that change is possible: “I also try to learn from the traumatic and violent things that have happened in my life so that they don’t repeat in their [her children’s] lives. I’m constantly making sure that they’re safe, they’re ok, they think for themselves and think the correct way on a situation [rather] than just going with the crowd.”
The goals of intervening with—or supporting and partnering with—mothers
with mental illnesses are to acknowledge the strengths and resources women bring to the challenges of mothering, build on these to achieve their goals, facilitate access to essential environmental resources and supports, and enhance positive elements of recovery in the context of family life.

Tags: recovery