For belonging to be real, people need the recognition of others, a message given in word, deeds and attitudes that says, “You do belong, you are a valuable member of this community, and we need you.
About Recovery & Community Health
The Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health promotes the recovery, self-determination, and inclusion of people facing psychiatric disability, addiction, and discrimination through a focus on their strengths and the valuable contributions they have to make to the lives of their communities.
What’s the connection between recovery and community health?
Recovery
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines recovery as a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live self-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential. PRCH offers services and supports oriented to promoting this sense of recovery as care that identifies and builds upon each person’s assets, strengths, and areas of health and competence to support the person in managing his or her condition while regaining a meaningful, constructive sense of membership in the community.
Thus, instead of treating and/or rehabilitating people, a transformed system’s primary responsibility becomes that of supporting people in their own efforts to manage and overcome addictions and mental illnesses in the process of rebuilding their lives. Many of the activities undertaken by PRCH are aimed at investigating and describing the ways in which people with behavioral health conditions do manage to recover from or learn to live a gratifying life despite mental illness and/or addiction, as well as at identifying, evaluating, and disseminating ways in which service providers can offer help that promotes and facilitates the person’s own efforts.
Community Health
Community Health is a field of public health that focuses on studying, protecting, or improving health within a community. We use this term to refer to an especially important, but frequently overlooked, dimension of recovery. An extension of a traditional public health model, a community health perspective first emphasizes that the community in which a person lives is an essential and powerful determinant of his or her health. We understand this community to refer to the physical environment in which a person lives, and also to the social, cultural, interpersonal, emotional, and valuative aspects of a given environment as well. The ways in which communities can actively support people early in the recovery process to make contributions to their communities and establish a more solid foundation for their ongoing recovery forms a core focus of PRCH's efforts.