Broadening Understanding of Individual Choices About Psychiatric Medication Use in Psychiatric Rehabilitation.

Most individuals in recovery are likely to attempt discontinuing their prescribed medication at least once. The collection of articles in this special issue uses research with quantitative and qualitative methods, reviews of the literature, conceptualization of theory, and first-person accounts from various perspectives to begin to shift the field of psychiatric rehabilitation from a narrow focus on symptom reduction and a fear-driven emphasis on medication adherence to a new perspective in which dilemmas and strong feelings about medication use are commonplace. We issue a call to action for training psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners, who often have the most direct and frequent interactions with people in recovery, to explore their clients' experiences with using medication and its impact on a range of life domains. Rehabilitation, recovery, and medication have ongoing mutual influences and require an inclusive, multidimensional framework that integrates complex ongoing interactions between personal, societal, and biological processes and assures that treatment decisions are in alignment with recovery goals. Impact and Implications: Although most individuals in recovery attempt discontinuing prescribed medications, many psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners shy away from discussing the topic. Psychiatric rehabilitation practitioners, who often have the most frequent interactions with people in recovery and frequently observe firsthand the positive and negative consequences of medication, should explore medication-related issues with their clients as part of multidimensional framework that integrates ongoing interactions between personal, societal, and biological processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]