Recovery and Rehabilitation programs

These services are located at the Berrima Cottage, which is on the campus of the Bowral District Hospital. There are three staff members who, on a part time basis, provide access to the program from monday to friday each week. The Bowral Mental Health team recognises that there are some people with a mental illness who need to recover their previous capability to again function in mainstream society. For many, the path to recovery might simply be to engage with therapists and other counselling staff, such as psychologists, to change the way they think in order to change the way they feel. In such a case, the patient could be referred to the "Better Outcomes" or "Better Access" mental health programs. These programs use mainly Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) as a therapy tool and can be accessed through the patient's general practitioner. Similarly, many patients can engage in, or supplement, their CBT sessions for depression with self-directed, internet available, reputable websites - such as Moodgym, BeyondBlue, and the Black Dog Institute. When rehabilitation is spoken about (which for many years was the only word used), it was suggested that this was somehow capable of restoring the person with the mental illness to a functional state that pre-dated their mental illness. The fact is that many people with a long-standing mental illness - such as persons with schizophrenia - could become chronically unwell without ever developing a capability to function independently in life. Nowadays, the Bowral Mental Health Service divides its tasks into clinical and non-clinical streams. Put simply, the staff assigned to Recovery and Rehabilitation primarily provide one-to-one counselling, group work, and clinical support to patients attending the program at Berrima Cottage. However, they also provide support and collaboration to the day-to-day living skills and social support programs provided externally by the Schizophrenia Fellowship, Mission Australia, Illawarra Disability Trust, Anglicare and the Benevolent Society. The focus of the non-clinical recovery services is to improve the living skills of patients with mental illness, so that they are better able to function and live independently with minimal support. In many cases for the chronically unwell these programs are less about re-habilitation and more about habilitation. Ideally, we can all hope that the person with the mental illness does find recovery and/or rehabilitation as a better outcome to that of remaining untreated and unsupported, thereby remaining mentally unwell.