The Recovery Movement

Family
1

I learned in the Coursera course I mentioned (https://family.schizophrenia.com/t/free-coursera-course-on-schizophrenia/10653 ) about a non-medical model for recovery called the Recovery Movement.

It focuses on:

  • The family member being more active in their recovery rather than being a passive consumer of doctor-ordered treatments
  • Social skills training to be better able to form social relationships. Focuses on group therapy where people learn to assess other people, form a hypothesis about what they might be thinking, and converse appropriately (e.g. about a shared interest, which was used as an example).
  • Employment: the instructor, Professor Kurtz, says the current thinking is that they should jump right into competitive employment (as opposed to the old thinking about gradualist, sheltered employment) and have ongoing support from a therapist to help them deal with the stresses of a job. He doesn’t say full-time right away, but whatever job they can do – according to their interests and ability – for however many hours they can handle. Does not include volunteering. It’s a job paying at least minimum wage so that they can take baby steps to being independent.
  • CBT to help with both positive and negative deluded thinking

All this depends on motivation and insight, which drugs might be necessary to help with in the beginning. If anyone knows about a Recovery Movement-oriented therapist in the Washington, D.C. area I’d like to know about them.

2

That’s interesting. Schizophrenia is such a broad spectrum, there must be some people for whom this would be good. Throwing my son into regular school wasn’t good, but maybe it was because he was on totally wrong medication. I think the social skills training would be fantastic.

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This is very close to how my recovery worked out, minus the active role of the family members. Not sure how this would work with diminished insight or anosognosia, perhaps LEAP may be a component of the family involvement.

While I didn’t have formal CBT, I intuited a version out of the scientific method, and my background in undergrad philosophy (logic and epistemology) and psychology (behaviorism).

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Just started this course. It is great so far.