A broader perspective can be obtained by examining other established treatment models that conceptualize the recovery process and the helping relationship in very different ways than the medical model. Accepting having a chronic, incur able illness, that is a permanent part of them, without guilt or shame, without fault or blame. Participating in an ongoing support system both as a recipient and a provider. Changing many aspects of their lives including emotions, interpersonal relationships, and spirituality both to accommodate their illness and grow through overcoming it. People must take responsibility for their own recoveries, helping themselves for their own benefit.
Medical rehabilitation tends to conceptualize recovery more in terms of function than pathology.
A person can recover from a stroke by being able to walk or talk again even though the brain cells are still damaged and can never be normal again. Neither permanent pathology, treatment, or adaptation invalidate a recovery if people have met their functional goals. Treatment professionals are therapists who act as coaches helping to design a rehabilitation plan in which they support the patients' efforts to achieve a series of functional goals. Their relationship often focuses around motivating and focusing the patients, own efforts to help themselves. Within rehabilitation, there is more of a concordance between the professional and the patient, than within the medical model, because both are clearly focused on treating the person and not the illness.