Psychiatric rehabilitation and the social worker

Abstract

Rehabilitation has been defined as the restoration of the handicapped to the optimum level of functioning in the emotional, social and occupational spheres that the individual rehabilitee is capable of. The crux of the rehabilitation programmes is individualisation of the programme to suit the special needs taking into account the resources of the individual patient. No two patients of chronic schizophrenia have the same personality or the same home background or the same degree or type of residual defect or the same degree of motivation for resocialisation or occupational rehabilitation.

The psychiatric social worker has a crucial role to play at every stage of rehabilitation and in the different components constituting the total rehabilitative effort

Keywords: Rehabilitation, psychiatric social worker