Plotting a 'road map to recovery': organizations team up to promote community integration for people with psychiatric disabilities.

A recently established Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) based at the University of Pennsylvania is promoting community integration as "the road map to recovery" for people with psychiatric disabilities. The UPenn Collaborative on Community Integration is one of a number of five-year RRTCs funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research within the U.S. Department of Education. The centers focus on developing new knowledge and translating it--through training, technical assistance, and dissemination--to key stakeholders, including (in this case) mental health consumers, professionals, advocates, policymakers, program administrators, and service providers.

In partnership with the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania (MHASP) and The Matrix Center at Horizon House, Inc., of Philadelphia, both of which provide services to people with mental illnesses, the UPenn Collaborative aims to eliminate barriers to community integration and identify and foster practices that enable people with mental illnesses to participate actively in their communities.

"I define 'community integration' as the opportunity to live your life like anyone else," says Mark Salzer, PhD, principal investigator and director of the UPenn Collaborative. Dr. Salzer worries that recovery is becoming …