Recovery networks and patient interpretations of mental illness

Abstract

This study examined young adult chronic patients' interpretations of the cause, severity, and prognosis of mental illness. Findings fail to support fully the hypothesis that changes in the service delivery system have encouraged patients to conceptualize psychiatric disorders in sickness terms. Nearly two thirds of the patients rejected the etiological opinion that psychiatric problems are involuntary illnesses. They also regarded psychiatric disorders as serious but assigned them an optimistic prognosis. Structural factors continue to play an important role in patients' views, yet the professional and lay recovery networks operate differently for perceptions of severity, cause, and curability.