Best Practices in Psychiatric Rehabilitation

Best practices are those principles, techniques, interventions, and service modles that experts acknowledge as the most effective in a particular field. In psychiatric rehabilitation, a human services field, best practices also must be valued by the service users. Effectiveness has to do with achieving specific desired outcomes, and in psychiatric rehabilitation, we define the desired outcome as recovery - a life of meaning and purpose for people who live with mental health conditions. Since the first editions of this book, changes in the field have included the development and dissemination of evidence-based practices. When a certain threshold of research evidence is reached, showing that one practice has better outcomes than alternatives, the practice is evidence-based. Written by well-respected experts in psychiatric rehabilitation, this book includes both evidence-based pratices, demonstrated through research that the practice does, in fact, achieve the outcomes desired, and best practices, which are recognized as desirable and effective, but that have not yet been studied adequately through research and evalutation. Written with the practitioner in mind, each chapter provides and overview2 of the topic, a summary of relevant research, and implementation guidelines.