In Review Rehabilitation in the United Kingdom: Research, Policy, and Practice

This paper reviews the current status of psychiatric reha-bilitation in the UK. The term is not fashionable; in fact, the word “rehabilitation ” rarely appears in UK mental health policy documents. The first and last major UK textbook on the topic was published almost 2 decades ago (1). Despite a long-standing policy focus on severe mental illness and the large proportion of mental health spending allocated to long-term care, few UK mental health professionals specialize in reha-bilitation. A survey undertaken by the Royal College of Psy-chiatrists identified only 46 consultant psychiatrists working full-time in rehabilitation in England in 2000 (that is, less than one per million population). This current low profile reflects the history of rehabilitation services (which flourished in the traditional mental hospital), shows the continuing ambiguities over the meaning of the term, and reveals a long-standing dif-ficulty in acknowledging the realities of continuing disability in an era of community mental health care. Bennett (2) provided an overview of the development of psy-chiatric rehabilitation services in the UK. Historically, these services were based in the mental hospital. Rehabilitatio