Psychosocial rehabilitation

Abstract

Psychosocial rehabilitation (synonymously referred to as psychiatric rehabilitation) is a field and service within mental health systems that shifted the treatment focus from symptom control to social inclusion by functional recovery. It aims to help individuals with severe mental illness live in the community as independently as possible. Psychosocial rehabilitation (PR) developed in the 1970s, when psychiatric reform, including the process of deinstitutionalization, had already paved the way to more responsive and balanced provision of mental health care. This chapter outlines major developments in and obstacles to the reform in European and other high-income countries. It introduces the evolving principles of PR and presents evidence on important models of care, such as assertive community treatment (ACT) and individual placement and support (IPS), that share the objectives of PR to improve integration of people with severe mental illness into the labour market and society in general.