Mental Health, Service User Involvement and Recovery

Jenny Weinstein has conscientiously assembled individual and collective consumer ideas about personal recovery and how to deploy them for culture change in mental health delivery systems. It is enlightening and instructive. Chapter authors describe universals of social stigma, as well as more specific problems with practitioner behaviour. A sense of transcendence is eloquently described, and sometimes movingly so, as the authors relate their odysseys. First-person accounts transfigure info illustrations of how fostering systems change can also advance personal recovery. Repeatedly, the role of educator of professionals emerges in this regard. For instance, there is an excellent chapter that describes student workshops based on common "Practice Dilemmas." They are facilitated by a team of consumers and address a pedagogical need to be challenging yet supportive and nonjudgmental in professional re-education... Regardless, this fast-reading book is valuable to understand how personal experiences affect recovery and advocacy. As grounding to educate a new generation of practitioners, I recommend it to trainees and faculty. For the rest of us, clinicians and administrators alike, it is part of the wake-up call.' Psychiatric Services, A Journal of the American Psychiatric Association `This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand some of the benefits, complexities and est ways to facilitate service user involvement. Covering involvement in advocacy, education, planning services, anti-discrimination campaigns, research and caring for ourselves, it gives examples of successful projects where service users have been involved.`

`Written by service users and academics, this book provides A-Z information lon service user involvement and recovery...This book has far-reaching implications for every stakeholder involved in using, providing, researching and/or teaching mental health care.`

‘This interesting and challenging book requires practitioners to reflect on their own actions and the systems within which they operate. The focus of the book on considering service user roles in recovery and service development is useful and approached in an innovative manner. I found the chapters written by service users to have a significant impact, and will certainly be recommending this book to my students. The insight into one service users’ experiences of acute mental distress and hospital admission, and how they engaged within and led their own recovery process, is illuminating reading.’

‘a timely and valuable addition to the growing literature on user involvement in mental health services in the UK…this book should be welcomed by all who work in and contribute to the rapidly changing mental health services and education today.’

This book offers an exciting alternative to the traditional medical model of care and has the potential to transform it. I was particularly inspired by the chapter involving users and carers in the classroom and will introduce them in teaching communication skills with small groups.

Involvement, personalisation and recovery have become policy buzzwords of our age. If you want serious help to negotiate them, to know what they can really mean, then read this book. It is a truly collaborative enterprise, bringing together service user and practitioner voices, knowledge and experience, to help people take back control of their lives as mental health service users/survivors and regain their place in the world. This book is not only a valuable sign of the desire, growing among service users and services, to move to more person-centred approaches to support. It is also a handbook to help achieve this, offering practical, down to earth as well as philosophical and value-based insights and understanding for all committed to this goal.