Transition to a strengths-based model

This book is a testament to the growing evidence base around recovery and recovery capital that has emerged globally and particularly in the English-speaking world over the course of the last 25 years. It is also part of a wider movement away from deficit management and symptom reduction to a strengths-based approach not only in the addictions field but across the behavioural sciences. This is seen in such disparate fields as positive psychology, restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, and the mental health recovery movement.

This transition involves six key actions that are briefly outlined here, which have significant resonance for the content of this book:

• 1. The transition from measuring deficits to measuring and attempting to build strengths, which is at the heart of the ‘recovery capital’ model. Essentially the model is predicated on the assertion by White and Cloud (2008) that long-term recovery is better predicted on the accumulation of strengths rather than on the amelioration of symptoms. This has implications for what we measure and how we measure it, and for our assumptions about goals and end points. If our aim is strengths building then success is not a homeostatic zero, but to measure being ‘better than well’ (Valentine, 2011).

• 2. Transition from an expert– patient to a partnership model: one of the challenges of moving to a strengths-based approach is that it challenges the ‘expert’ status of professionals, diminishing the power disparities between parties, in favour of a partnership approach.