Therapeutic communities

Clarke, Simon; Winship, Gary; Clarke, Jenelle; Manning, Nick

Abstract

Learning Outcomes: By the end of this chapter we hope that you will be able to: 1.Understand some of the core principles underlying Therapeutic Communities (TCs). 2.Identify the historic roots behind TCs in terms of providing an alternative therapeutic modality to conventional biological psychiatry, including the role of nurses in developing the core approach. 3.Demonstrate an understanding of how TCs may support recovery from severe mental health difficulties through the personal account of a former TC member. 4.Understand TCs in relation to recovery approaches in mental health. 5.Appreciate TCs continuing relevance to the NHS, mental health nursing and current mental health services
Summary of key points:
TCs are planned social environments that involve both staff and service users in the therapeutic process
Despite considerable diversity across service setting, TCs share a common ethos and philosophy
Core values and principles underlying TCs include: Attachment, Containment, Communication, Respect, Interdependence, Relationships, Participation, Process, Balance and Responsibility
TCs in their current format emerged from post-Second World therapeutic experiments with traumatised war veterans at three hospitals across the UK, and then during the radical critique of psychiatry in the 1960s and 1970s
TC principles became, to a lesser or greater extent, part of the fabric of organised healthcare, especially in terms of social psychiatric attempts to reform community mental healthcare
Despite a relative decline in the latter decades of the Twentieth Century and first decade of the Twenty-First Century, TCs are still at the forefront of developing alternative psychiatric practices in mainstream healthcare

Citation

Clarke, S., Winship, G., Clarke, J., & Manning, N. (2017). Therapeutic communities. In M. Chambers (Ed.), Psychiatic and mental health nursing: the craft of caring (631-640). Routledge

• Acceptance Date: Jan 1, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Mar 20, 2017
• Publication Date: Apr 19, 2017
• Deposit Date: May 21, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: May 21, 2018
• Publisher: Routledge
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 631-640
• Book Title: Psychiatic and mental health nursing: the craft of caring
• Chapter Number: 57
• ISBN: 9781482221954
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/851522
• Publisher URL: https://www.routledge.com/Psychiatric-and-Mental-Health-Nursing-The-craft-of-caring-3rd-Edition/Chambers/p/book/9781315381879
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Psychiatric and mental health nursong: the craft of caring / edited by Mary Chambers on 7 March 2017, available online: https://www.routledge.com/Psychiatric-and-Mental-Health-Nursing-The-craft-of-caring-3rd-Edition/Chambers/p/book/9781315381879
• Contract Date: May 21, 2018