Working Paper: Resilience and Positive Disintegration in Mental Health Systems (draft)
Kirsten Robinson & Frances Westley
June, 2009
This working paper draws on Kazimierz Dabrowski’s theory of positive disintegration as well as theories of resilience, to propose a new interpretive framework for understanding mental illness. In the last 50 years, increases in the effectiveness of pharmacological drugs have dramatically increased the manageability of symptoms, resulting in a psychopharmacological approach that has come to dominate. However, we argue that the psychopharmacological approach is a simple approach to a complex problem and that resilience suggests the limitations of the model. Expanding this interpretive framework to include multilevel systems, that include variability and regulation through change, can help us to understand and respond to the complexities inherent in the mental illness system.
