Patients can experience active recovery regardless of the state of their illness. Spiritual healing is a more complex and diverse field. In fact, treating an illness medically first is often equated with betraying spiritual faith and therefore antagonistic to God and spiritual healing. In mental health we tend to overtly exclude spiritual aspects of life and treatment although they may be very important to our clients. These moments, whether conceptualized spiritually or not, clearly impart a state of acceptance and love, prior to relieving the illness.
Psychosocial rehabilitation is a growing movement in community mental health today.
One of the main roots of psychosocial rehabilitation is the consumer movement which arose primarily as a reaction against the psychiatric establishment. The theory remains strikingly anti-medical model and many proponents are still very angry about the coercive, abusive, infantilizing, dehumanizing, isolating, condescending, stigmatizing, destructive aspects of traditional mental health systems. The focus is on strengths rather than weaknesses, people rather than illnesses. The other main root of psychosocial rehabilitation is psychiatric rehabilitation. Clients are taught skills to overcome deficits and to reduce stress in order for their illnesses to become less symptomatic and for them to become more functional.