Recovery: A Guide for Mental Health Practitioners

Peter Watkins, Elsevier, 2007, $49.95 pb, 180 pp ISBN 9780750688802

Handbook of Psychosocial Rehabilitation

Robert King, Chris Lloyd & Tom Meehan, Blackwell, 2007, £27.99 pb, 232 pp. ISBN 9781405133081

Mysteriously absent from the National Service Framework for adult mental health, and all but forgotten from modernising policy initiatives (Reference HollowayHolloway, 2005), psychiatric rehabilitation is now enjoying something of a renaissance.

These books are serendipitously well paired, each complementing and completing what is missing in the other, and there is much here to support practitioners interested in developing recovery-based rehabilitation. Both are very well produced. They are pleasant to hold and read, and both take the reader on a well-planned tour of the territory. Their major differences are in voice, focus and engagement.

Watkins’ monograph underlines the significance of context, both familial and societal, and is slanted towards humanism, creativity and existential considerations. Unusually in a ‘guide for mental health practitioners’, he offers much that is prefaced by ‘I believe’ or ‘speaking personally’, and it is interesting to be drawn into a relationship with an experienced and thoughtful practitioner who has sought to work out his principles in practice. He also includes reflections on the personal and professional challenges associated with the suicide of his son. He offers a book with passion and commitment so lacking in more ‘balanced texts’, and it is all the better for it.

However, his use of stories of personal recovery, as ‘the soul’ of his book was marred by his accompanying disclaimer on one of his chosen witnesses, who clearly valued a biological, diagnostic and medical approach. Watkins’ preference of Laing over Leff, and gentle but sustained antipsychiatry posture, felt oddly paternalistic.

It is a skewed account, but one that leans towards what may be the emerging centre of future practice (Care Services Improvement Partnership et al, 2007) and is mostly consistent with the imperative in psychiatric nursing to put ‘values into action’ (Department of Health, 2006).

Coming next the Handbook of Psychosocial Rehabilitation felt a little disappointing. It helpfully clarifies the various terms and frames of reference used in the text, and is thoroughly evidence based, but in being so well ordered and systematic it felt disconnected from the reality of working in rehabilitation, which depends on engaging hopefully with the chaotic but enervating disturbance that is day-to-day practice. However, it is a handbook rather than a manifesto, and its virtue is clarity rather than commitment.

Its style worked best when helpfully outlining service evaluation, and was weakest when discussing the well-being of the practitioner, when it offered a competent review of the literature on occupational stress but came over as unempathic and detached in tone. To a degree, Helen Glover's excellent chapter on ‘lived experience perspectives’ compensated for this, but her account did not seem to be integrated in the discourse of the book as a whole. Overall this is a book that will support research and help pass exams, but may not fire passion for the work itself.

Taken together these are worthy additions to a growing series of foundational texts offering a contemporary restatement of psychiatric rehabilitation. Those interested in building up a rounded understanding should buy both and take time to read and reflect on them. Those only wishing to buy one book on the topic may like to see what else is available.