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Illness Management and Recovery on an Inpatient Psychiatric Unit – Making it Easier to Rebound from Hospitalization

What we know

People come to inpatient psychiatric units when they're in need of acute care for their mental illness. They may need major adjustments to their medications or other treatments designed to help them become stable again. Once they leave the safety and structure of inpatient hospitalization, these folks often face some tough battles getting their lives back in order.

What if...

We jump started the re-integration process by beginning recovery oriented care while people are on the inpatient unit, would they have a better chance at reclaiming their lives?

Our plan to find out

We implemented Illness Management and Recovery (IMR) – usually an outpatient treatment strategy – for use on the Psychotic Disorders Unit at the UNC Neurosciences Hospital. We also included signification education of staff in recovery principles. We're currently looking at data we collected to see if people who received IMR are doing better with their recovery.

Who is involved in this collaborative effort

The Center's Dr. Brian Sheitman is collaborating with various departments and experts at UNC-Chapel Hill on this effort: psychology, occupational therapy, nursing, and clinical care management.

Myths View all myths

It's a chemical imbalance/brain disorder that you can test for.

Although we think schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental brain disorder that may involve chemical imbalances and possibly structural differences in the brain, we can't test for it at present. Researchers are exploring use of the human genome (map of genes both at the individual and larger group level), neuroimaging (highly detailed pictures of the brain), and electrophysiology (study of the brain's activity), to try to find indicators of illness. They are learning a great deal, but to date no markers that could be used as a test have emerged. (Source: OASIS Early Psychosis Toolkit)