Behavioral Health and Relational Dynamics

Abstract

Work within the field of behavioral health within the United States has focused on Recovery, the process of restoring someone's life back to their previous level of functioning. Recovery does not set the expectation for continued growth or development. The western medical model is based upon disease, based upon this same premise, identification and treatment to regain what is an arbitrary pervious state of “health”. The Recovery moment began in the 1960's with the intention of deinstitutionalizing patients held in state institutions and returning them to their communities. The New Frontier of former president of John F. Kennedy intended to provide community mental health systems, where services once provided only at hospitals could be available to every citizen in need. The Recovery Model has never embraced the belief of their being value or growth within the patient's experience, but looked to a reductionist model of disease for the cause, cure and care of the mentally ill. Medication rarely resolves most mental illnesses. Instead, medications lessen or attempt to control symptoms. Recovery, based upon the western disease model, limits the possibilities of acknowledging the growth and development out of what are worldwide experiences of psychological dilemmas. The obstacles to true recovery (or health) created by the disease model have resulted in stigma and devaluation of people who are responding to universal psychological issues. In countries outside of the United States, many Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) diagnoses do not exist. Centuries ago, many DSM diagnoses were not considered permanently disabling, as they were later construed. Recovery itself denotes the need to recapture, repossess, or regain something, perhaps recovery should not be the aim of behavioral health, as much as finding a valued and meaningful role for people throughout the world. Relational Dynamics is a model that provides strategies for changing non-cooperative relationships into cooperative interactions and possible alliances. Relational Dynamics can be utilized within behavioral health to minimize the misuse of domination by others and provide a means for clients' self-determination.