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Social rehabilitation involves the creation of an intentional community in which attention is paid to the interconnections of the clients with their social and physical environments. Social pressure and support from members of the community help clients move in the direction of positive change.

The application of social rehabilitation techniques ranges from alternatives to hospitalization for severely disoriented people to work with people who, while psychologically stable, have become dependent on the mental health system as a life style.

Implicit in the social rehabilitation model is a shift in the notion of care for those considered to have a psychiatric disability. In contrast to institutional treatment or custodial care, for example, in board and care homes, social rehabilitation may not involve taking care of the client. Rather, our attempt is to help clients care for themselves by developing social, vocational, and other “living” skills. Such skills include finding ways to help oneself and others independent of professional care.

Professional clinicians and custodial-care personnel are mandated, in many cases, to attend to the needs of their clients whether or not the clients acknowledge those needs. We, on the other hand, search for those goals that are consciously held by our clients and direct our attention to supporting those goals which are in the direction of positive change.

Other related definitions

• Psychosocial Rehabilitation
  A holistic approach to working with people with psychiatric disabilities, providing a range of supports and services in the social, vocational, educational and leisure areas of life, in order that the individual can live as independently as possible in the community.

• Psychiatric Rehabilitation
  A term popularized by Boston University, emphasizing skill acquisition and producing a technology to train staff in the techniques, used interchangeably with psychosocial rehabilitation

• Social Rehabilitation
  Social Rehabilitation is an earlier term describing the emphasis and perspective of the initial pioneers in the field. Its origins are in California, where the focus was on integrating people back into the community. Individual problems were placed in a context of social issues, such as discrimination and poverty.