Psychiatric rehabilitation is based on the assumption that adequate social and
role functioning is the outcome of three factors; the characteristics of the individual, the
community’s requirements for adequate functioning, and the supportiveness of the
environment. The individual’s characteristics –symptoms, cognitive functioning, past
experiences, current role skills– limit his/her functioning; the community’s requirements
are the standards for evaluating that functioning; and the environment may be either
responsive or indifferent to the individual’s attempts to function.
The interaction among these three factors defines the process, form, and content
of psychiatric rehabilitation’s assessment and intervention procedures. The rehabilitation
process begins with a comprehensive elicitation of the individual’s medium and longterm goals for improved social and instrumental role functioning. These goals anchor
the process and provide the specific foci for the next step; assessment of the three
factors that produce functioning.
The assessment measures the individual’s characteristics, particularly past and
current functioning, and gathers information about the community’s requirements for
adequate role functioning and the environment’s resources and support. The individual
and the rehabilitation practitioner/team review the results and together they formulate
the incremental, short-term goals that are the steps to achieving the individual’s medium and long-term goals.