Recovery-Oriented Language

Clinical Terms - Recovery Language

Decompensated - Not doing well

Manipulative - Getting needs met, strategic

Non-Compliant - Doesn’t want to

High functioning - Doing well

Low functioning - Having difficulty

He’s a schizophrenic - He’s a person with schizophrenia

Mentally ill - Has a mental health challenge, has lived mental health experience 

Unmotivated - Doesn’t want to

Client, patient - Name, person I work with

Chronic - In recovery 

Delusional - Sees or hears things that others don’t                        

Kate Roberge from West County Services spoke during the November Mental Health Board Meeting. She described the words that hurt and the words that help to heal like this:

What is Recovery-oriented language?

Mental health recovery philosophy and practice (the Recovery Model) intentionally uses language that builds on people’s strengths and embodies a belief that every person with mental health challenges deserves to be treated with dignity and equality.

Traditional clinical, impersonal, or “medical model” language is impersonal, and has an inherent one up, one down-ness that is judgmental and stigmatizing, It creates a very large power differential with psychiatrists and clinicians in a role of superiority. “I’m the doctor and you're not.”