Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Email this article to a Colleague Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to My Articles & Searches Download to citation manager Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Articles by Ware, N. C. Articles by Fisher, D. Search for Related Content PubMed Citation Articles by Ware, N. C. Articles by Fisher, D. Chronically Mentally Ill Patients Skills Training Other Psychiatric Rehabilitation Recovery Related Article

A Theory of Social Integration as Quality of Life

OBJECTIVE: Quality of life, once a priority in caring for people with severe mental illness, has since been eclipsed by other concerns. This article returns attention to quality of life by offering a theory of social integration (as quality of life) for persons disabled by severe mental illness. METHODS: Data collection for this qualitative study consisted of 78 individual, unstructured interviews with 56 adults who have been psychiatrically disabled. Field observations and interviews with staff and service users were carried out during eight ethnographic visits to service sites working to promote social integration. Data were analyzed with an inductive strategy based on grounded theory methodology and framed theoretically by the capabilities approach to human development. Goals were to identify personal capacities needed for integration, characterize occasions for capacity development in mental health care, and develop a working theory. RESULTS: Six personal capacities were identified: responsibility, accountability, imagination, empathy, judgment, and advocacy. Occasions were characterized in terms of their defining mechanisms: contradiction, reinterpretation, rehearsal, raising expectations, and confrontation. A working theory was constructed to characterize the process of capacity development for social integration through exposure to increasingly challenging occasions for growth in the context of mental health care. CONCLUSIONS: Capacities for social integration can be effectively developed as part of the everyday routines of mental health care. Eventually, the process shifts from development to the exercise of capacities and to participation as full citizens in the social world beyond treatment.

Related Article:

January 2008: This Month's Highlights
Psychiatr Serv 2008 59: 7. [Full Text] [PDF]

This article has been cited by other articles:

				A. T. Young, C. A. Green, and S. E. Estroff New Endeavors, Risk Taking, and Personal Growth in the Recovery Process: Findings From the STARS Study Psychiatr Serv, December 1, 2008; 59(12): 1430 - 1436. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Get information about faster international access.

Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2008 American Psychiatric Association. All rights reserved.

Home | Search | Current Issue | Past Issues | Subscribe | All APPI Journals | Help | Contact Us