Abstract
This paper discussed various philosophical and ethical perspectives on how to know recovery from schizophrenia. According to the empirical approach, recovery can be measured by objective and standardized tools which evaluate the severity of psychiatric symptoms or levels of social and vocational functioning. These measurements have minimum scores or sets of criteria of what recovery looks like, so this approach may be useful to evaluate patient’s treatment outcomes by healthcare providers. On the contrary, phenomenological approach stands qualitative research methods to understand an individual’s subjective, lived, or unique experiences while he or she lives with schizophrenia. Historical perspective holds that a point of view on recovery has been changed from negative to positive as our social perspectives for schizophrenia changes. Feminist perspective suggests that recovery can be understood by exploring female’s subjective experiences like successful marriage life or having responsibility for children. Ethical perspectives regarding the meaning of recovery were also addressed. Each philosophical and ethical perspective guides different research methodology and methods. Therefore, to employ appropriate methodology and methods, understanding philosophical and ethical backgrounds would be important.
Highlights
Schizophrenia is one of the most serious and chronic mental disorders characterized by positive and negative symptoms, which leads to a functional deterioration
In order to discover what recovery from schizophrenia means with feministic view, women’s subjective experiences about recovery from schizophrenia should be asked and contexts of the phenomena should be considered across the study
Some people see recovery as relieved positive and negative symptoms or functional improvement of a patient with schizophrenia, others regard the phenomena of recovery as having hope and responsibility, enhancing quality of life, and healing process
Summary
Schizophrenia is one of the most serious and chronic mental disorders characterized by positive and negative symptoms, which leads to a functional deterioration. Community-based mental health systems began to provide people with schizophrenia with various programs to manage their psychiatric symptoms and to develop their social and vocational skills [2] This changed view about the course of schizophrenia can be accounted by the introduction of antipsychotic drugs, but many other factors such as a landmark study on the prognosis of schizophrenia conducted by Harding, Brooks, Ashikaga, Strauss, & Breier [3], studies on a new definition of recovery from severe mental disorders by Anthony [2] and Jacobson & Greenly [4], and numerous qualitative studies about lived experience of people with schizophrenia [5]-[12]. This paper: 1) reviewed philosophical and ethical backgrounds on how we could know a person with schizophrenia has recovered or is recovering, and 2) discussed how these perspectives could affect the knowledge development on recovery from schizophrenia
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