About this Research Topic
Along with biological and psychological factors, social factors are also associated with the aetiology of mental illness. Social determinants, for instance, has shown to have a significant impact on mental health outcomes. However, services for persons with mental illness mostly focus on biological and psychological aspects with very little focus on addressing the associated social factors. A more holistic approach to care that meets the needs of persons beyond illness identities, is the need of the hour. Approaches to care need to build social capital, individual and community agency and capacity, as well as empower and provide opportunities for people to live a purposeful and meaningful life. This requires interdisciplinary coordination and shared decision-making to improve access to needs such as accommodation, income, and purposeful activity. Such a paradigm shift in the delivery of care needs to be built on evidence and this issue is proposed to foreground/spotlight the evidence.
Mental illnesses tend to be enduring experiences that people live with from adolescence or early adulthood. In the main, the discourse on caring for persons with a mental illness has been dominated by western conceptualisations of legal and medical frameworks. Consequently, existing models of care are mostly clinical in nature and potentiate disempowerment, create 'patienthood' and dependency, and compromise autonomy and recovery. There is also growing evidence that medical and psychological services alone do not address factors that promote social and emotional wellbeing critical to our mental wellbeing. In this issue, we are looking for examples of non-clinical models of care or approaches for persons with mental illnesses that can be replicated in multiple settings with a focus on developing elements of holistic care. These approaches need to be primarily aimed at enabling better social, emotional, and mental wellbeing outcomes. They need to be interventions that overcome social exclusion and inequity.
This research topic focuses on non-clinical models of care for persons over the age of 18 years with a mental illness. It includes the following types of articles:
• Systematic, scoping, and narrative reviews
• Qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods studies
• Case studies
• Personal / lived experience accounts
• Personal narratives
• Commentaries
Keywords: Mental health services, Holistic care, Resilience building approaches, Person centred outcome measurement, Community focused interventions
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
