Sandra Resnick, Editor of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, and Richard Goldberg, Guest Editor, discuss the significance and practical implications of the September 2019 special issue on psychiatric rehabilitation for veterans.
What is the special issue about?
This special issue of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal focuses on innovations in psychiatric rehabilitation that support recovery for veterans with psychiatric disabilities. Many of the articles are by researchers at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The long-standing commitment of the Department Veterans Affairs to psychiatric rehabilitation research and services has created an environment where psychiatric rehabilitation services are evolving with the changing needs of the veteran population.
What is the significance of the issue?
Psychiatric rehabilitation is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on the development of skills and resources to help individuals living with mental health conditions achieve goals in important life domains such as housing, employment, education, and social relationships. Historically, psychiatric rehabilitation interventions have complemented traditional symptom-based treatments for mental health disabilities. These interventions have been increasingly adopted in mental health systems, and services have evolved to integrate treatment and rehabilitation as part of a holistic approach to supporting recovery.
The movement of psychiatric rehabilitation services and strategies into the mainstream is positive, but it has blurred the lines between psychiatric rehabilitation and treatment. One article, for example, discusses how peer support services, a hallmark of psychiatric rehabilitation, is integrated into web-based cognitive behavioral therapy, creating a new type of service that is difficult to classify as either rehabilitation or treatment.
These service trends are visible in this special issue, reflecting the innovation in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where the commitment to research and practice in psychiatric rehabilitation has been advancing the standard of care for decades. These services have the potential to shape practice more broadly.
What are some key takeaways and practical implications of the articles featured in the issue?
A core principle of psychiatric rehabilitation services is honoring client choice. According to one article in this special issue, most veterans with schizophrenia who receive services from the Department of Veterans Affairs report that they have supportive family and can articulate preferences about family involvement in care. This underscores the importance of involving individuals with psychiatric disabilities in all decisions about the services that they receive.
Another article shows that the Independent Placement and Support model of supported employment, an effective practice that has been demonstrated to help people with psychiatric disabilities such as schizophrenia achieve competitive employment, not only improved employment outcomes in veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder but also had benefits in interpersonal relationships, daily lifestyle, and quality of life. This is one of the first studies to show that participation in supported employment services can help support recovery, independent of work achievement.
Special Issue
Citation
- Resnick, S. G., & Goldberg, R. W. (2019). Psychiatric rehabilitation for veterans and the evolution of the field. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 42(3), 207–209. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/prj0000383
Note: This article is in the Health Psychology and Medicine topic area. View more articles in the Health Psychology and Medicine topic area.