Look up the provider director at the Foundation for Excellence in mental health care: http://www.mentalhealthexcellence.org/
EXCELLENCE Provider Directory Principles for Practice
We believe that...
- People experiencing distress remain people first and foremost and should be viewed and treated with respect (as opposed to being viewed and treated as diagnoses or cases).
- Recovery involves collaboration between the person in distress and their social and therapeutic network.
- The wellness model of care should be the norm. The current illness model should be challenged.
- The paradigm of recovery and well-being is the underpinning of all our initiatives.
- Individual informed choice and self-determination are critical ingredients for recovery.
- Children, young Adults and Seniors are particularly vulnerable to emotional distress.
- People are resilient.
- Honest evaluation of medication risks and benefits should be shared openly.
- The role that alcohol, prescription medication abuse and illegal drugs play in damaging the lives of those with mental health challenges and their families must be addressed.
- Social and emotional distress is an essential, if difficult, dimension of human experience.
- While medications may provide some symptom relief in the short-term, the assumption that their long term use is effective is not supported by independent research. In fact, new research has found that long term medication use may impede sustained mental health recovery and optimal health.
- People can and do recover from mental health conditions, at times facilitated by, but at other times in spite of, current mental health services. Long-term disability is not inevitable and should be neither an expected nor an accepted result of mental health conditions.
- Recovery is primarily the work of the person in distress. We value individual choice and foster hope by appreciating the active and substantial involvement of the person in distress in all facets and phases of their own care and recovery, whether or not they choose to use medications.