The emphasis is on a balance of patient rights and responsibilities. The intervention clearly demonstrates that serious mental illnesses have no cure but can be successfully controlled in most cases, and it strongly reinforces the concept of blamelessness. These topics are chosen to be consistent with a biopsychosocial model emphasizing all three components. The biological nature of brain disorders includes the structural and functional phenomena, genetics, viral theories, and other biological findings. The psychological factors include coping skills, health belief models, personality and constitutional factors, and learning styles.
Social factors emphasize cultural perspectives, stigma and the influence of environmental stress.
Psychiatric patient education occurs in hospitals, outpatient clinics, psychiatric offices, residential programs, day treatment and partial hospital programs, clubhouses, client homes, and advocacy and support groups, to name a few of the locations. This intervention is quite portable and can take place in any location convenient to the consumer and provider. Education is appropriate at all points in the course of the illness, although the type of intervention may vary depending upon whether the client is experiencing a first episode or is a seasoned veteran in the battle against the illness. Timing is paramount, and one of the requisite skills of the educator is to assess readiness to learn and to carry out the intervention most useful at the time. Most providers now believe that it is a patient's right to know about their illness and its treatment, course and prognosis.