ABSTRACT
The responsibilities we have include developing a framework for practice which validates the person, reconnects her/him to the objective context in which she/he lives, legitimates the impact of psychiatric history or self-expression, and engages the person in a process of transformation. The transforming process must confront the elements or ingredients existing in the present context which maintain or reproduce mental patient functioning/thwart personal development. The process aims to support an increasing autonomy and capacity for interdependence and to act against isolation; to support collectivity or network building and to deny the primacy of individual functional performances. At the same time, the principles must not romanticize the ex-patient, must not deny the impact of hospitalization by assuming the person is free and automatically capable of full autonomous livingunless the person demands this perception and refuses to participate in available services. In the pursuit of a set of internally related practice principles which embody the values espoused here, we came upon the work of Paolo Freire.
