The Recovery Approach to Rehabilitation: Implementation in Supervision

The recovery approach to psychiatric rehabilitation has introduced a new set of challenges, enabling consumers to set goals and redefine their role in obtaining them. This has revolutionized the management of the relationship between service providers and consumers. In the present paper, we suggest that one of the important ways to supervise professionals interested in internalizing the recovery approach is to implement its major principles in the supervision work itself. The paper draws on intersubjective therapy concepts and guiding principles, which emphasize the development of the professional-consumer relationship in which the consumers' sense of agency can be respected and promoted. The principles we suggest here which may underlie supervision are: (1) clients or supervisees, with their own decisions and interests, are at the center of the rehabilitation therapy and supervision; (2) mutuality in the rehabilitative/supervisory relationship and ongoing discussion of the interactants' power and authority; and (3) the promotion of positive and empowering narratives and self-perceptions in the process of rehabilitation/supervision.